Inequality in the 21st Century:A Critical Analysis of Piketty`s Work

Nadia Garbellini

No 69, Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking

Abstract: Thomas Piketty`s (2014) Capital in the XXI Century aims to analyze distributions of income and wealth in a set of developed countries and their determinants, from the nineteenth century to the present. The objective is a bold one, made even more so by the fact that Piketty pursues it not only from a theoretical, but also, from an empirical point of view. The task is particularly impressive not only because of the enormous effort required in collecting and organizing data, but also because the work entails attaching a deterministic interpretation to facts and figures from radically different countries over a time span that covers almost two centuries, thereby forcing comparison between numbers coming from clearly incommensurable contexts. These difficulties are not lost to Piketty, who states that ``[w]ithout precisely defined sources, methods, and concepts, it is possible to see everything and its opposite.`` (Piketty, 2014, pp.2-3) This study argues that the empirical `methods and concepts` adopted by Piketty are not always consistent with those coming from his reference theoretical framework, nor from National Accounts (United Nations, 2009).

Keywords: Capital; Capital output ratio; Income distribution; Inequality; Growth theory; National accounts. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D30 D31 D33 E01 E20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:thk:wpaper:69

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3125221

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