Various changes are emerging in the international financial arena which could challenge the West’s dominance in for example the global monetary system. In this latest addition in our special series of thinkpieces on global themes, Vanessa Rossi of Chatham House explores these changes....

Beginning with the important work of Murphyand Welch (1992), a great deal of recentresearch has attempted to document andexplain the dramatic changes in the wage distributionthat occurred during the 1980s (see also Katz andMurphy 1992). Practically every income group faced adecline in real wages...

United States wage performance has been disquieting.Between 1979 and 1993, realhourly compensation rose by just 5.5 percent.This poor average wage performancehas been associated with a dramatic increase in the dispersionof earnings: both in the returns to general characteristicssuch as...