More than 500 economists and other leading experts, including a Nobel laureate and a former United States treasury secretary, on Friday urged G20 leaders to establish an international panel to tackle extreme wealth disparities.

The panel was a key recommendation of a task force created by G20 host South Africa and led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz ahead of the leaders' meeting next week.

Modelled on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it would analyse all aspects of inequality -- from land ownership to tax avoidance -- and seek to inform policymaking.

In an open letter published on Friday, the experts -- also including Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu, France's Thomas Piketty, and former US treasury secretary and former Federal Reserve chair Janet

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