Friday, April 25, 2014

Reviews of Thomas Piketty's "Capital"

A selection of reviews of Thomas Piketty's important book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" (Belknap Press, 2014):

"The main driver of inequality — the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth — today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past and may do so again." [An excerpt from the introduction here. And Piketty's own presentation slides here (pdf).]


Updated June 10:

* Paul Krugman (The New York Review of Books)

* Robert M. Solow (New Republic)

Daniel Shucman (Wall Street Journal)

* Branko Milanovic [pdf] (The Journal of Economic Literature)

Robert Rowthorn [pdf] (University of Cambridge)

* Robert Skidelsky (Prospect)

* Clive Crook (Bloomberg)

* Steven Pearlstein (Washington Post)

James Pethokoukis (National Review)

* Michael Tanner (National Review)

James K. Galbraith (Dissent)

* Robert Paul Wolff (The Philosopher's Stone)

* Nick Pearce (New Statesman)

Will Hutton (The Observer)

* Robert J. Samuelson (Washington Post)

Tyler Cowen (Foreign Affairs)

Jeff Faux (The Nation)

Paul Krugman (New York Times)

* John Cassidy (The New Yorker)

* Justin Fox (Harvard Business Review)

Martin Wolf (Financial Times)

Jacob Hacker et.al. (The American Prospect)

Eric Alterman (The Nation)

Timothy Shenk (The Nation)

* Thomas Steinfeld (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Jedediah Purdy (Los Angeles Review of Books)

Gerald Braunberger (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Paul Mason (Guardian)

Garett Jones (Reason)

Robert Kuttner (The American Prospect)

Brad DeLong (Washington Center for Equitable Growth)

David Smith (Sunday Times)

Kenneth Rogoff (Project Syndicate)

Heather Boushey [pdf] (Challenge Magazine)

* Mervyn King (Sunday Telegraph)

Kathleen Geier (Washington Monthly)

Cass R. Sunstein (Bloomberg)

Mike Konczal (Boston Review)

* Lawrence H. Summers (Democracy: A Journal of Ideas)

Martin Feldstein (Wall Street Journal)

Emily Eakin (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

* Thomas Frank (Salon)

* Hans-Werner Sinn (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Stefan Homburg (Die Welt)

Stefan Homburg [pdf] [UK] (Leibniz University of Hannover)

* Dani Rodnik (Project Syndicate)

David Harvey (City University of New York)

* Debraj Ray (New York University)

Guillaume Allègre & Xavier Timbeau [pdf] (OFCE, Paris)

Alexander J. Field (Journal of Economic History)

* Randall Holcombe (The Independent Institute)

Robert J. Shiller (Project Syndicate)

* Ricardo Hausmann (Project Syndicate)

* Christel Lane (LSE Review of Books)


See also four of the many videos:

* Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Steven Durlauf

* Paul Krugman (interviewed by Bill Moyers)

Piketty answers his critics (Juncture interview)

* Chris Giles & Ferdinando Giugliano: Doubts over Piketty inequality data (Financial Times)


+ Piketty's response [pdf] to the criticism in the Financial Times.

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