''After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality'' is a 2017 collection of essays edited by the economists
Heather Boushey
Heather Marie BousheyThe New York Times''Weddings/Celebrations; Heather Boushey, Todd Tucker'' accessed August 25, 2011. (born 1970) is an American economist. Boushey currently serves as a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Adv ...
,
J. Bradford DeLong
James Bradford "Brad" DeLong (born June 24, 1960) is an economic historian who is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. DeLong served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the Clinto ...
, and Marshall Steinbaum. The essays center on how to integrate inequality into
economic thinking. Common themes are
Thomas Piketty
Thomas Piketty (; born 7 May 1971) is a French economist who is Professor of Economics at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Associate Chair at the Paris School of Economics and Centennial Professor of Economics in the Int ...
’s influence on academia and policy, the need for better wealth data, inequality in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, and the reasons for the process of wealth accumulation and rising inequality discussed by Piketty in his book ''
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
''Capital in the Twenty-First Century'' (french: Le Capital au XXIe siècle) is a book written by French economist Thomas Piketty. It focuses on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the United States since the 18th century. It was initially ...
'' (2013). In the final entry, Piketty himself responds to the essays.
Contents
The book's essays are divided into five sections: "Reception", "Conceptions of Capital", "Dimensions of Inequality", "The Political Economy of Capital and Capitalism", and "Piketty Responds".
Reception
*
Arthur Goldhammer
Arthur Goldhammer (born November 17, 1946) is an American academic and translator.
Early life
Goldhammer studied mathematics at MIT, gaining his PhD in 1973.
Career
Since 1977 he has worked as a translator. He is based at the Center for Europ ...
- "The Piketty Phenomenon"
*
Robert Solow
Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (; born August 23, 1924) is an American economist whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth model named after him. He is currently Emeritus Institute Professor of Economics at the Ma ...
- "Thomas Piketty Is Right"
*
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...
- "Why We're in a New Gilded Age"
Conceptions of Capital
* Devesh Raval - "What's Wrong with ''Capital in the Twenty-First Centurys Model?"
*
Suresh Naidu - "A Political Economy Take on W/Y"
*
Daina Ramey Berry
Daina Ramey Berry is an American historian and academic who is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She was formerly the associate dean of the graduate school and chair of the hist ...
- "The Ubiquitous Nature of Slave Capital"
* Eric R. Nielsen - "Human Capital and Wealth before and after ''Capital in the Twenty-First Century''”
*
Laura Tyson
Laura D'Andrea Tyson (born June 28, 1947) is an American economist and university administrator who is currently a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley and a senio ...
and
Michael Spence
Andrew Michael Spence (born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American economist and Nobel laureate.
Spence is the William R. Berkley Professor in Economics and Business at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and the Philip H. Kn ...
- "Exploring the Effects of Technology on Income and Wealth Inequality"
* David Weil - "Income Inequality, Wage Determination, and the Fissured Workplace"
Dimensions of Inequality
*
Branko Milanović - "Increasing Capital Income Share and Its Effect on Personal Income Inequality"
* Christoph Lakner - "Global Inequality"
*
Gareth A. Jones - "The Geographies of ''Capital in the Twenty-First Century'': Inequality, Political Economy, and Space”
*
Emmanuel Saez
Emmanuel Saez (born November 26, 1972) is a French, naturalized American economist who is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. His work, done with Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, includes tracking the incomes of th ...
-"The Research Agenda after ''Capital in the Twenty-First Century''”
*
Mariacristina De Nardi
Mariacristina De Nardi is an economist who was born in Treviso, Italy. She is the Thomas Sargent Professor at the University of Minnesota since 2019. In 2013, De Nardi was appointed professor of economics at University College London; since Septe ...
, Giulio Fella, and Fang Yang - "Macro Models of Wealth Inequality"
*
Heather Boushey
Heather Marie BousheyThe New York Times''Weddings/Celebrations; Heather Boushey, Todd Tucker'' accessed August 25, 2011. (born 1970) is an American economist. Boushey currently serves as a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Adv ...
- "A Feminist Interpretation of Patrimonial Capitalism“
*
Mark Zandi
Mark M. Zandi is an Iranian-American economist who is the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, where he directs economic research.
Zandi's research interests encompass macroeconomics, financial markets and public policy. He analyzes the economi ...
- "What Does Rising Inequality Mean for the Macroeconomy?"
* Salvatore Morelli - "Rising Inequality and Economic Stability"
The Political Economy of Capital and Capitalism
* Marshall I. Steinbaum - "Inequality and the Rise of Social Democracy: An Ideological History"
* David Singh Grewal - "The Legal Constitution of Capitalism"
*
Ellora Derenoncourt - "The Historical Origins of Global Inequality"
* Elisabeth Jacobs - "Everywhere and Nowhere: Politics in ''Capital in the Twenty-First Century''“
Piketty Responds
* Thomas Piketty - "Toward a Reconciliation between Economics and the Social Sciences"
Reviews
Asad Abbasi of
London School of Economics
, mottoeng = To understand the causes of things
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £240.8 million (2021)
, budget = £391.1 millio ...
described ''After Piketty'' as a work of serious scholarship, saying, "Readers without a background in economics will find some chapters daunting, terminology-wise." Abbasi claimed,"Piketty hopes that his work provokes discussion on wealth and inequality. ''After Piketty'' not only generates such debate, but also deepens it by highlighting the gaps missed by Piketty."
Melissa S. Kearney of ''
Foreign Affairs
''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership organization and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and ...
'' said the essays "put Piketty’s arguments into a broad historical and intellectual context and highlight some noteworthy omissions that call into question his book’s most dire predictions." She lauded the collection as "an intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics." However, she said that the contributors overly assume wealthy elites will maintain high positions regardless of left-wing policies and that contributors "do not explore those potential policies at great length, nor do they consider the precise mechanisms that would shape pushback from the elites." Kearney described the Brexit vote and Trump's election as evidence against the view that elites can overcome support for more
wealth redistribution
Redistribution of income and wealth is the transfer of income and wealth (including physical property) from some individuals to others through a social mechanism such as taxation, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confisc ...
.
Paschal Donohoe
Paschal Donohoe (born 19 September 1974) is an Irish Fine Gael politician who has served as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform since December 2022 and President of the Eurogroup since July 2020. He has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for the ...
of ''
The Irish Times
''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...
'' stated that "despite its size, this collection misses so much." Donohoe said that the collection's editors fail to be impartial by describing critics' arguments as substance-free, and that there has been potent criticism of Piketty concerning "whether laws can exist in economics, whether the digital economy disrupts the accumulation and transfer of wealth, and even whether Piketty confuses wealth with capital." Donohoe also argued, "I do not believe that inequality is inevitable. Progressive taxation and social interventions make a difference. But such perspectives do not receive adequate prominence."
References
{{Reflist
2017 non-fiction books
2017 in economic history
Books about wealth distribution
Harvard University Press books