This book presents a global analysis of the distribution of pay, deploying systematic new measurements on a large scale. Contributions cover the US wage structure back to 1920 and up to 1998, pay inequality and unemployment in Europe since 1970, and the evolution of inequality alongside industrial growth, liberalization, financial crisis, state violence and industrial policy in more than fifty developing countries. The essays evaluate the major debates over rising inequality, and support the emerging view that there exists a powerful macro-dynamics of pay inequality in both rich and poor countries - a view whose origins go back to Keynes and Kuznets. Several papers present detailed descriptions of a new global pay inequality data set based on Theil's T statistic; theoretical and methodological chapters permit students and specialists full access to the measurements and to the non-parametric statistical techniques underlying these studies.