Do you want to stay informed about this journal? Click the buttons to subscribe to our alerts.
Thomas Piketty and the Search for r
In: Historical MaterialismThomas Piketty’s magnum opus on the accumulation and distribution of wealth over the last 200 years has been greeted with the biggest noise from mainstream (and heterodox) economics of any economics book. Piketty shows that inequality of wealth and income is inherent to capitalism and it is getting worse. The reason for the rise in the inequality of wealth is a rise of income going to capital in the form of profits, rent and interest. Inequality is not due to higher-skilled labour getting higher income than the lower-skilled. The central question for Piketty’s thesis is whether rising inequality is the central contradiction of capitalism and thus its gravedigger. Is it a tendency for a rising net return on capital (Piketty) or is it the tendency for a falling rate of profit (Marx) that is the key contradiction of capitalism in the twenty-first century?
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Bergheim Stephan Long-Run Growth Forecasting 2008 Berlin Springer
-
Carchedi Guglielmo & Roberts Michael ‘The Long Roots of the Present Crisis: Keynesians, Austerians, and Marx’s Law’ World Review of Political Economy 2013 4 1 86 115 available at: <https://thenextrecession.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/the-long-roots-of-the-present-crisis.pdf>.
-
Cassidy John ‘Forces of Divergence’ The New Yorker 2014 March 31 available at: <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/31/forces-of-divergence>.
-
Chotiner Isaac ‘Thomas Piketty: I Don’t Care for Marx’ New Republic 2014 May 5 available at: <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117655/thomas-piketty-interview-economist-discusses-his-distaste-marx>.
-
DeLong Brad ‘Piketty Day Here at Berkeley: The Honest Broker for the Week of April 26, 2014’ Washington Center for Equitable Growth 2014 April 23 available at: <http://equitablegrowth.org/2014/04/23/piketty-day-berkeley-honest-broker-week-april-26-2014/>.
-
Eichengreen Barry ‘Losing Interest’ Project Syndicate 2014 April 11 available at: <http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/barry-eichengreen-examines-competing-explanations-for-three-decades-of-decline-in-real-interest-rates>.
-
Galbraith James K. ‘Kapital for the Twenty-First Century?’ Dissent 2014 Spring available at: <http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/kapital-for-the-twenty-first-century>.
-
Ibbotson Roger G. & Sinquefield Rex A. Ibbotson sbbi 2010 Classic Yearbook: Market Results for Stocks, Bonds, Bills, And Inflation 1926–2009 2010 Chicago Morningstar
-
Iglesias Matthew ‘Thomas Piketty Doesn’t Hate Capitalism: He Just Wants to Fix It’ Vox.com 2014 April 24 available at: <http://www.vox.com/2014/4/24/5643780/who-is-thomas-piketty>.
-
Kaldor Nicholas ‘Economic Growth and Verdoorn’s Law: A Comment on Mr. Rowthorn’s Article’ The Economic Journal 1975 85 340 891 896
-
Krugman Paul ‘Why We Are in a New Gilded Age’ The New York Review of Books 2014 May 8 available at: <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age/>.
-
Kuznets Simon ‘Economic Growth and Income Inequality’ American Economic Review 1955 45 1 1 28 available at: <https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/top20/45.1.1-28.pdf>.
-
Maito Esteban Ezequiel ‘Income Distribution, Turnover Speed and Profit Rate in Japan, Chile, Netherlands and United States’ 2014a available at: <http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/59283/>.
-
Maito Esteban Ezequiel ‘The Historical Transience of Capital: The Downward Trend in the Rate of Profit since the Nineteenth Century’ 2014b available at: <http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/55894/1/mpra_paper_55894.pdf>.
-
Marx Karl Fowkes Ben Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume One 1976 Harmondsworth Penguin
-
Milanovic Branko ‘The Return of “Patrimonial Capitalism”: A Review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ Journal of Economic Literature 2014 52 2 519 534
-
Moreno Kasia ‘The 67 Richest Are as Wealthy as the World’s Poorest 3.5 Billion’ 2014 available at: <http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/67-richest-wealthy-poorest-billion>.
-
Moseley Fred ‘The Rate of Surplus Value, the Organic Composition, and the General Rate of Profit in the u.s. Economy, 1947–67: A Critique and Update of Wolff’s Estimates’ American Economic Review 1988 78 1 298 303
-
Oxfam International ‘Working for the Few’ 2014 available at: <http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/working-few>.
-
Piketty Thomas Le capital au xxie siècle 2013 Paris Éditions du Seuil
-
Piketty Thomas Goldhammer Arthur Capital in the Twenty-First Century 2014a Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press
-
Piketty Thomas ‘Piketty Response to ft Data Concerns’ Financial Times 2014b May 23 available at: <http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/piketty-response-to-ft-data-concerns/>.
-
Piketty Thomas ‘Appendix to Chapter 10, “Inequality of Capital Ownership”. Addendum: Response to ft’ 2014c May 28 available at: <http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014TechnicalAppendixResponsetoft.pdf>.
-
Piketty Thomas & Zucman Gabriel ‘Capital Is Back’ Paris School of Economics working paper 2013 July 26 available at: <http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/PikettyZucman2013wp.pdf>.
-
Saez Emmanuel & Zucman Gabriel ‘Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913’ 2014 available at: <http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014Slides.pdf>.
-
Solow Robert M. ‘A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth’ Quarterly Journal of Economics 1956 70 1 65 94 available at: <http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Solow1956.pdf>.
-
Wolf Martin ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ Financial Times 2014 April 15 available at: <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0c6e9302-c3e2-11e3-a8e0-00144feabdc0.html>.
-
2
Milanovic 2014.
-
3
Krugman 2014.
-
4
Wolf 2014.
-
5
Cassidy 2014.
-
6
See Piketty and Zucman 2013.
-
7
Oxfam International 2014. Actually it is probably only 67 people since Oxfam’s data were compiled, according to the website of the independent-left Senator Sanders of Vermont – see Moreno 2014.
-
8
Piketty 2014a, p. 577.
-
11
See Saez and Zucman 2014.
-
13
Kuznets 1955. Kuznets predicted that inequality in economies would take the form of a bell curve: rising inequality as market economies emerged, then as they matured, falling inequality. In contrast, Piketty sees a U-curve: high inequality with a brief period of lower inequality and then a return to high inequality. See Piketty 2014a, p. 13.
-
16
Piketty 2014a, p. 1.
-
17
Piketty 2014a, p. 9.
-
18
Piketty 2014a, p. 10.
-
19
Piketty 2014a, p. 27.
-
21
Piketty 2014a, p. 46.
-
22
Piketty 2014a, p. 47.
-
23
Piketty 2014a, p. 53.
-
24
Piketty 2014a, p. 48.
-
25
Piketty 2014a, p. 52.
-
27
Piketty 2014a, p. 170.
-
28
Piketty 2014a, p. 348.
-
29
Piketty 2014a, p. 77.
-
31
Piketty 2014a, p. 93.
-
32
Piketty 2014a, p. 97.
-
33
Piketty 2014a, p. 55.
-
34
See Ibbotson and Sinquefield 2010.
-
36
Picketty 2014a, p. 118.
-
37
Picketty 2014a, p. 122.
-
39
Piketty 2014a, p. 173.
-
40
Piketty 2014a, p. 191.
-
41
Picketty 2014a, p. 173.
-
42
Solow 1956.
-
43
Piketty 2014a, p. 173.
-
45
Piketty 2014a, p. 173.
-
46
Piketty 2014a, p. 463.
-
47
Piketty 2014a, p. 466.
-
48
Piketty 2014a, p. 228.
-
49
Marx 1976, pp. 130–1.
-
50
Maito 2014a and Moseley 1988.
-
51
For example, see Carchedi and Roberts 2013, which also references many other studies on p. 114.
-
52
Maito 2014b.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1360 | 140 | 12 |
| Full Text Views | 289 | 13 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 116 | 25 | 2 |
Thomas Piketty’s magnum opus on the accumulation and distribution of wealth over the last 200 years has been greeted with the biggest noise from mainstream (and heterodox) economics of any economics book. Piketty shows that inequality of wealth and income is inherent to capitalism and it is getting worse. The reason for the rise in the inequality of wealth is a rise of income going to capital in the form of profits, rent and interest. Inequality is not due to higher-skilled labour getting higher income than the lower-skilled. The central question for Piketty’s thesis is whether rising inequality is the central contradiction of capitalism and thus its gravedigger. Is it a tendency for a rising net return on capital (Piketty) or is it the tendency for a falling rate of profit (Marx) that is the key contradiction of capitalism in the twenty-first century?
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1360 | 140 | 12 |
| Full Text Views | 289 | 13 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 116 | 25 | 2 |