Employing comparative and quantitative historical methods Frankema explores long run trends of asset and income distribution in Latin America, arguing that there is little reason to regard the yawning gap between rich and poor as the persistent result of a colonial heritage.

In the literature on wages and income inequality in colonial sub-Saharan Africa, two recurrent themes can be observed: high racial inequality between European colonisers and the colonised African population and high skill premiums, a measure of the ratio of skilled to unskilled wages. For...