In recent decades, the growth of finance and rising income inequality has become a pervasive feature of the political economies in affluent capitalist democracies. This study investigates the long-run effects of financialization on three measures of income inequality—market-generated income inequality, redistribution, and state-mediated income inequality—in 18 affluent capitalist democracies from 1981 to 2011. We focus on three aspects of financialization (finance, insurance, and real estate employment; credit expansion; and financial crises). We find support for our claims that all three measures of financialization increase market-generated and state-mediated income inequality. The results for redistribution are mixed: credit expansion decreases redistribution as expected, but financial crises increase redistribution—a finding that supports the welfare state stabilization hypothesis.

Digital technology has become an indispensable component in education around the world. Despite its growing importance, a gap in students' digital skills and usage based on their socioeconomic status-known as the second digital divide-has been identified in a wide range of countries. Using data from the 2009 OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, we consider two aspects of the second digital divide for 15-year-olds across 55 countries: the gaps in use of educational software at home and Internet literacy. Specifically, we ask whether national income, political freedom, and national investments in research and development (R&D) and secondary education are associated with the second digital divide. We find that national income predicts the digital divide and that national investments have differential effects depending upon a country's income. R&D spending reduces the socioeconomic gap in educational software use only in low-income countries. Educational expenditures reduce the Internet literacy gap in high-income countries while exacerbating it in low-income ones. Additional analyses suggest that income inequality increases the digital divide, but like political freedom, the effects become non-significant when national income is considered. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for policymakers interested in reducing the digital divide.

This paper examines the long-run effects of globalization, financialization, and European integration on union density in 18 affluent capitalist democracies between 1981 and 2010. After appropriate controls, imports from developing and imports from advanced countries and financialization negatively affect, and capital mobility positively affects, unionization. Immigration has no consistent effect on unionization. Also, European integration—measured as logged years of membership in the European Union (EU)—negatively affects unionization. Interactions of EU membership with globalization and financialization variables reveal a complicated pattern with distinctive effects for EU and non-EU countries. Overall, our findings contribute to the ongoing stream of scholarly research about the causes of union decline among affluent democratic countries in the neoliberal period.

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In this study, we analyze the determinants of total, private, and public sector union density among 191 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas in 2003. In particular, we examine the effects of globalization and labor market transformation on metropolitan union density while controlling for labor market structure, the business cycle, and the political climate. Our analysis demonstrates that (1) globalization and labor market transformation have crosscutting but, on balance, negative effects on union density;(2) there are both similarities and differences in determinants of private and public sector unionism; and (3) business cycle and labor market structure variables are weak, but political climate variables are strong determinants of union density.