Determine the industrial core of world economy
The industrial core of world economy saw its level of material productivity and standards of living explode in the 19th and 20th centuries. Elsewhere the growth of productivity levels and standards of living and spread of industrial technologies was slower. As industrialized economies grew whereas industrial technologies spread slowly elsewhere, world became a more and more unequal place. As development economist Lant Pritchett puts it that dominant feature of world economic history is "divergence, big-time." In terms of productivity levels and relative incomes, world today is more unequal and more divergent than ever before.