Marco Ranaldi
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Marco Ranaldi is an Assistant Professor in Economics at University College London SSEES and Director of the UCL Centre for New Economic Transitions (CNET). He is also visiting fellow at the International Inequality Institute of the London School of Economics and associated researcher with the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the City University of New York and at the UCL Economics Department. Previously, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the Stone Center at CUNY, consultant at the Development Research Group of the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and visiting scholar at the University of Oxford. He holds a PhD from the Paris School of Economics and the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. His research interests lie at the intersection between economic inequality and political economy, with a focus on inequality measurement and the comparative analysis of economic systems.
In April 2025 he joins the Paris IAS for a one-month writing residency.
Research project
Political Economy, Economics of Inequality, Economic Measurement
Normative Aspects of Compositional Equality
Compositional inequality describes differences between rich and poor in terms of their income typology. Two income sources are considered in my studies: labor income, stemming from work, and capital income, arising from assets. When compositional inequality is high, the rich and the poor are earning their income from different sources: the rich mainly from pre-existing wealth, the poor from labor. When, by contrast, compositional inequality is minimal, the rich and poor are earning income from capital and labor in the same proportion: for example, the twenty percent from wealth and the remaining eighty percent from labor. To put it simply, under high compositional inequality the rich are capitalists and the poor are workers, while under low compositional inequality, rich and poor individuals are both simultaneously capitalists and workers.
Compositional inequality is a new inequality concept – if it speaks about inequality at all. In discussions about income inequality, it is generally accepted that extremely high inequality is worse than extremely low inequality. Although there is no consensus on the ideal level of income inequality in society—whether it should be zero or slightly more—we can agree that a society where a single individual owns all available resources is undesirable. However, with compositional inequality, the implications are less clear. Is a high level of compositional inequality detrimental or beneficial for society? Is compositional equality inherently desirable? This project explores the normative implications of compositional equality from a theoretical, empirical, and policy perspective.
Key Publications
M. Ranaldi, "Income Composition Inequality", Review of Income and Wealth, 2022
M. Ranaldi, "Capitalist Systems and Income Inequality", with Branko Milanović, Journal of Comparative Economics, 2022
M. Ranaldi, "Compositional Inequality: Measurement, Stylized Facts, and Normative Aspects", Stone Center Working Paper Series, No. 87, 2024
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