Table Of ContentAFTER PIKETTY
The Agenda for Economics and Inequality
Edited by
Heather Boushey
J. Bradford DeLong
Marshall Steinbaum
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
2017
Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved
Design by Dean Bornstein
Cover design: Graciela Galup 978-0-674-50477-6 (alk. paper) 978-0-674-97817-1 (EPUB)
978-0-674-97818-8 (MOBI)
978-0-674-97819-5 (PDF)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Boushey, Heather, 1970–
editor. | DeLong, J. Bradford, editor. | Steinbaum, Marshall, editor.
Title: After Piketty : the agenda for economics and inequality / edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford
DeLong, Marshall Steinbaum.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016048076
Subjects: LCSH: Piketty, Thomas, 1971– Capital au XXIe siècle. | Capital—Social aspects. | Equality—
Economic aspects. | Wealth.
Classification: LCC HB501 .A457 2017 | DDC 332/.041—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016048076
As scholars, our work stands on the shoulders of those who’ve come before. It is
in that spirit that we dedicate this volume to Anthony Atkinson (1944–2017),
whose life’s work to document and understand economic inequality inspired us
—and we hope will continue to inspire generations of scholars to come—to ask
fundamental questions about how the economy works and whom it works for.
Contents
Introduction
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Three Years Later
J. Bradford DeLong, Heather Boushey, and Marshall Steinbaum
I. Reception
1. The Piketty Phenomenon
Arthur Goldhammer
2. Thomas Piketty Is Right
Robert M. Solow
3. Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
Paul Krugman
II. Conceptions of Capital
4. What’s Wrong with Capital in the Twenty-First Century’s Model?
Devesh Raval
5. A Political Economy Take on W / Y
Suresh Naidu
6. The Ubiquitous Nature of Slave Capital
Daina Ramey Berry
7. Human Capital and Wealth before and after Capital in the Twenty-
First Century
Eric R. Nielsen
8. Exploring the Effects of Technology on Income and Wealth Inequality
Laura Tyson and Michael Spence
9. Income Inequality, Wage Determination, and the Fissured Workplace
David Weil
III. Dimensions of Inequality
10. Increasing Capital Income Share and Its Effect on Personal Income
Inequality
Branko Milanovic
11. Global Inequality
Christoph Lakner
12. The Geographies of Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Inequality,
Political Economy, and Space
Gareth A. Jones
13. The Research Agenda after Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Emmanuel Saez
14. Macro Models of Wealth Inequality
Mariacristina De Nardi, Giulio Fella, and Fang Yang
15. A Feminist Interpretation of Patrimonial Capitalism
Heather Boushey
16. What Does Rising Inequality Mean for the Macroeconomy?
Mark Zandi
17. Rising Inequality and Economic Stability
Salvatore Morelli
IV. The Political Economy of Capital and Capitalism
18. Inequality and the Rise of Social Democracy: An Ideological History
Marshall I. Steinbaum
19. The Legal Constitution of Capitalism
David Singh Grewal
20. The Historical Origins of Global Inequality
Ellora Derenoncourt
21. Everywhere and Nowhere: Politics in Capital in the Twenty-First
Century
Elisabeth Jacobs
V. Piketty Responds
22. Toward a Reconciliation between Economics and the Social Sciences
Thomas Piketty
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
INTRODUCTION
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Three Years
Later
J. BRADFORD DELONG, HEATHER BOUSHEY, AND MARSHALL STEINBAUM
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which we will abbreviate
to C21, is a surprise best seller of astonishing dimensions.
Its enormous mass audience speaks to the urgency with which so many wish
to hear about and participate in the political-economic conversation regarding
this Second Gilded Age in which we in the Global North now find ourselves.1
C21’s English-language translator, Art Goldhammer, reports in Chapter 1 that
there are now 2.2 million copies of the book scattered around the globe in thirty
different languages. Those 2.2 million copies will surely have an impact. They
ought to shift the spirit of the age into another, different channel: post-Piketty,
the public-intellectual debate over inequality, economic policy, and equitable
growth ought to focus differently.
Yet there are counterbalancing sociopolitical forces at work. One way to look
at Piketty’s project is to note that, for him, the typical low-inequality
industrialized economy looks, in many respects, like post–World War II Gaullist
France during its Thirty Glorious Years of economic growth, while the typical
high-inequality industrialized economy looks, in many respects, like the 1870–
1914 Belle Époque version of France’s Third Republic. The dominant current in
the Third Republic was radically egalitarian (among the male native born) in its
politics, radically opposed to ascribed authority—especially religious authority
—in its ideology, and yet also radically tolerant of and extremely eager to
protect and reinforce wealth. All those who had or who sought to acquire
property—whether a shop to own, a vineyard, rentes, a factory, or broad estates
—were brothers whose wealth needed to be protected from the envious and the
alien of the socialist-leaning laboring classes.
Underlying Piketty’s book is a belief that this same cultural-ideological-
economic-political complex—that all those with any property at all need to band
together to protect any threats to the possession or the profitability of such
property—will come to dominate the twenty-first century political economy, in
the North Atlantic at least. It will thus set in motion forces to keep the rate of
profit high enough to drive the rise of the plutocracy Piketty sees in our future.
Two years ago we editors would have said, “maybe, but also maybe not.” In
the wake of the 2016 presidential election in the United States, however,
Piketty’s underlying belief looks stronger. While we will not repeat the cultural
dominance of property of the 1870–1914 Belle Époque French Third Republic,
we do look to be engaged in the process of echoing many of its main
characteristics.
It is important to note that Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election
thanks to the electoral college and not because he got more votes. But he got a
lot of votes, and he got them in some places that have historically voted
Democratic but faced extreme economic dislocation in the recent past.
Moreover, Hillary Clinton failed to achieve the margins among young voters and
racial minorities that Barack Obama did, plagued as they are with historically
low employment rates, despite the record-high student debt they were promised
would lead to security in the labor market. And so Piketty’s analytical political-
economic case looks to us to have been greatly strengthened by Trump’s
presidential election victory.
Thus we believe our book is even more important now. And so we have
assembled our authors and edited their papers to highlight what we, at least,
believe economists should study After Piketty as they use the book to sharpen
their focus on what is relevant and important.
