changes in the distribution of income are not only an important economic phenomenon but can also be a formidable social and political challenge and globalisation and trade are often seen as potentially implicated economic research on its own cannot substitute for the political process in deciding whether and if so how income inequality should be reduced but it can help by disentangling the different determinants as well as shedding light on the underlying mechanisms that result in income inequality but with the concurrent wave of globalisation evidenced through the growing participation in global value chains gvcs as shown in oecd and a questions related to how these processes are linked are increasingly coming to the fore