After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality

by Heather Boushey (Editor), J. Bradford DeLong (Editor), Marshall Steinbaum (Editor)

Overview

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year

“An intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics.”
—Foreign Affairs

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most widely discussed work of economics in recent years. But are its analyses of inequality and economic growth on target? Where should researchers go from there in exploring the ideas Piketty pushed to the forefront of global conversation? A cast of leading economists and other social scientists—including Emmanuel Saez, Branko Milanovic, Laura Tyson, and Michael Spence—tackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty.

“A fantastic introduction to Piketty’s main argument in Capital, and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation…showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy—will hold true in the long run.”
—Nature

“Piketty’s work…laid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge.”
—Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674978171
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/08/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	688
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Heather Boushey is President and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and former Chief Economist on Hillary Clinton’s transition team. She is the author of Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict and coeditor of After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality (both from Harvard). The New York Times has called Boushey one of the “most vibrant voices in the field” and Politico twice named her one of the top 50 “thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics.”

J. Bradford DeLong is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Marshall Steinbaum is Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Three Years Later J. Bradford DeLong Heather Boushey Marshall Steinbaum 1

I Reception

1 The Piketty Phenomenon Arthur Goldhammer 27

2 Thomas Piketty Is Right Robert M. Solow 48

3 Why We're in a New Gilded Age Paul Krugman 60

II Conceptions of Capital

4 What's Wrong with Capital in the Twenty-First Century's, Model? Devesh Raval 75

5 A Political Economy Take on W / Y Suresh Naidu 99

6 The Ubiquitous Nature of Slave Capital Daina Ramey Berry 126

7 Human Capital and Wealth before and after Capital in the Twenty-First Century Eric R. Nielsen 150

8 Exploring the Effects of Technology on Income and Wealth Inequality Laura Tyson Michael Spence 170

9 Income Inequality, Wage Determination, and the Fissured Workplace David Weil 209

III Dimensions of Inequality

10 Increasing Capital Income Share and Its Effect on Personal Income Inequality Branko Milanovic 235

11 Global Inequality Christoph Lakner 259

12 The Geographies of Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Inequality, Political Economy, and Space Gareth A. Jones 280

13 The Research Agenda after Capital in the Twenty-First Century Emmanuel Saez 304

14 Macro Models of Wealth Inequality Mariacristina De Nardi Giulio Fella nd Fang Yang 322

13 A Feminist Interpretation of Patrimonial Capitalism Heather Boushey 355

16 What Does Rising Inequality Mean for the Macroeconomy? Mark Zandi 384

17 Rising Inequality and Economic Stability Saluatore Morelli 412

IV The Political Economy of Capital and Capitalism

18 Inequality and the Rise of Social Democracy: An Ideological History Marshall I. Steinbaum 439

19 The Legal Constitution of Capitalism David Singh Grewal 471

20 The Historical Origins of Global Inequality Ellora Derenoncourt 491

21 Everywhere and Nowhere: Politics in Capital in the Twenty-First Century Elisabeth Jacobs 512

V Piketty Responds

22 Toward a Reconciliation between Economics and the Social Sciences Thomas Piketty 543

Notes 567

Acknowledgments 660

Index 661

Editorial Reviews

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century forcibly entered the public imagination in 2014, but the book’s impact on academic thinking and research is only just starting to be felt. The essays in After Piketty offer new findings and admirably lay out an agenda that will influence future research on inequality, opportunity, and measurement for years to come.

Miles Corak

The topics discussed in the book affect all citizens. High inequality should concern everyone because it is a moral, social and political issue.

Asad Abbasi

The essays in After Piketty are impressively diverse, not only in their subject matter but also in the way they relate to Piketty’s original text. Several launch straightforward critiques of his work—both of what he has done and what he has failed to do—while others present complementary ideas that aim to enrich his arguments.

Matt Mazewski

The book serves as a fantastic introduction to Piketty’s main argument in Capital [in the Twenty-First Century], and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation—r > g, showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy—will hold true in the long run. It also contains thoughtful interventions in debates about the political economy of inequality.

Nature - Aaron Reeves

Heather Boushey, Brad DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum have convened and shaped an ambitious and refreshingly frank conversation about Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This extraordinary gathering of two dozen authors—working across disciplinary boundaries—interrogates Piketty’s core claims about the causes, correlates, characteristics, and consequences of high and rising levels of income and wealth inequality in the West. The gathered authors celebrate and hone Capital’s far-reaching contributions; they also tackle substantial weaknesses and assess omissions. Readers unfamiliar with Capital will find an accessible synthesis, graduates of the original book will emerge with a more nuanced understanding, and inequality scholars—newcomers and veterans—will revise their research agendas.

Janet C. Gornick

Piketty’s work did what decades of rising disparities couldn’t do: it reminded macroeconomists that inequality matters. More starkly, it laid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge, collecting ideas about capital, technology, power, gender, race, and privilege that might help inform a broader understanding.

Justin Wolfers

[Boushey, DeLong, and Steinbaum] have curated an impressive set of essays responding to Piketty’s work…Among them are deep dives into the assumptions underlying Piketty’s predictions, historical accounts of the role of slavery and gender in capitalist systems, and considerations of the relationship between concentrated wealth and political power. 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. At the end of the volume, Piketty himself weighs in. The result is an intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics.

Foreign Affairs - Melissa S. Kearney

The book, edited by economists Heather Boushey, J. Bradford Delong and Marshall Steinbaum, is more interesting than the original. It benefits from having 21 essays on different inequality-­related topics. As Piketty says in his gracious response, included at the end of this 660-­page volume, the many authors bring a welcome breadth of expertise…Piketty’s commentators raise more questions than they answer, but they are important questions about a significant social challenge.

Breakingviews - Edward Hadas

Unusually for such a large and varied collection, almost all the papers are worth reading. They repeat themselves rarely; they examine multiple different perspectives; and most of them are well and conservatively argued…[Piketty’s concluding essay] is written with great attention to criticism and humility about his conclusions. In it, Piketty insists that [Capital in the Twenty-First Century’s] purpose was to start a conversation. By the evidence of his concluding essay, and the book in general, that conversation is well underway.

Business Standard - Mihir S. Sharma

[Boushey, DeLong, and Steinbaum] have curated an impressive set of essays responding to Piketty's work...Among them are deep dives into the assumptions underlying Piketty's predictions, historical accounts of the role of slavery and gender in capitalist systems, and considerations of the relationship between concentrated wealth and political power. 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. At the end of the volume, Piketty himself weighs in. The result is an intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics.--Melissa S. Kearney "Foreign Affairs" (11/1/2017 12:00:00 AM)

The book serves as a fantastic introduction to Piketty's main argument in Capital [in the Twenty-First Century], and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equation--r > g, showing that returns on capital grow faster than the economy--will hold true in the long run. It also contains thoughtful interventions in debates about the political economy of inequality.--Aaron Reeves "Nature" (3/16/2017 12:00:00 AM)

The book, edited by economists Heather Boushey, J. Bradford Delong and Marshall Steinbaum, is more interesting than the original. It benefits from having 21 essays on different inequality--related topics. As Piketty says in his gracious response, included at the end of this 660--page volume, the many authors bring a welcome breadth of expertise...Piketty's commentators raise more questions than they answer, but they are important questions about a significant social challenge.--Edward Hadas "Breakingviews" (5/12/2017 12:00:00 AM)

The essays in After Piketty are impressively diverse, not only in their subject matter but also in the way they relate to Piketty's original text. Several launch straightforward critiques of his work--both of what he has done and what he has failed to do--while others present complementary ideas that aim to enrich his arguments.--Matt Mazewski "Commonweal" (1/5/2017 12:00:00 AM)

The topics discussed in the book affect all citizens. High inequality should concern everyone because it is a moral, social and political issue.--Asad Abbasi "LSE Review of Books" (9/18/2017 12:00:00 AM)

Unusually for such a large and varied collection, almost all the papers are worth reading. They repeat themselves rarely; they examine multiple different perspectives; and most of them are well and conservatively argued...[Piketty's concluding essay] is written with great attention to criticism and humility about his conclusions. In it, Piketty insists that [Capital in the Twenty-First Century's] purpose was to start a conversation. By the evidence of his concluding essay, and the book in general, that conversation is well underway.--Mihir S. Sharma "Business Standard" (8/16/2017 12:00:00 AM)

Heather Boushey, Brad DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum have convened and shaped an ambitious and refreshingly frank conversation about Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This extraordinary gathering of two dozen authors--working across disciplinary boundaries--interrogates Piketty's core claims about the causes, correlates, characteristics, and consequences of high and rising levels of income and wealth inequality in the West. The gathered authors celebrate and hone Capital's far-reaching contributions; they also tackle substantial weaknesses and assess omissions. Readers unfamiliar with Capital will find an accessible synthesis, graduates of the original book will emerge with a more nuanced understanding, and inequality scholars--newcomers and veterans--will revise their research agendas.--Janet C. Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, City University of New York

Piketty's work did what decades of rising disparities couldn't do: it reminded macroeconomists that inequality matters. More starkly, it laid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge, collecting ideas about capital, technology, power, gender, race, and privilege that might help inform a broader understanding.--Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century forcibly entered the public imagination in 2014, but the book's impact on academic thinking and research is only just starting to be felt. The essays in After Piketty offer new findings and admirably lay out an agenda that will influence future research on inequality, opportunity, and measurement for years to come.--Miles Corak, University of Ottawa

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