Showing papers by "Thomas Piketty published in 2019"

Capital and Ideology

Abstract: A New York Times Best Seller An NPR Best Book of the Year The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

Capital Accumulation, Private Property and Rising Inequality in China, 1978-2015

Abstract: This paper combines national accounts, survey, wealth and fiscal data (including recently released tax data on high - income taxpayers) in order to provide consistent series on the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth in China over the 1978 2015 period. We find that the aggregate national wealth - income ratio has increased from 350% in 1978 to 700% in 2015. This can be accounted for by a combination of high saving and investment rates and a gradual rise in relative asset prices, reflecting changes in the legal system of property. The share of public property in national wealth has declined from about 70% in 1978 to 30% in 2015, which is still a lot higher than in rich countries (close to 0% or negative). Next, we provide sharp upward revision of official inequality estimates. The top 10% income share rose from 27% to 41% of national income between 1978 and 2015, while the bottom 50% shar e dropped from 27% to 15%. China’s inequality levels used to be close to Nordic countries and are now approaching U.S. levels.

Indian Income Inequality, 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?

Abstract: We combine household surveys and national accounts, as well as recently released tax data to track the dynamics of Indian income inequality from 1922 to 2015. According to our benchmark estimates, the top 1 percent of earners captured less than 21 percent of total income in the late 1930s, before dropping to 6 percent in the early 1980s and rising to 22 percent in the recent period. Our results appear to be robust to a range of alternative assumptions seeking to address numerous data limitations. These findings suggest that much more can be done to promote inclusive growth in India. We also stress the need for more transparency on income and wealth statistics, which is key to allow an informed democratic debate on inequality.

Measuring lnequality in the Middle East 1990–2016: The World’s Most Unequal Region?

Abstract: Fil: Gonzalez Alvaredo, Facundo. Ecole D'economie de Paris; Francia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Oficina de Coordinacion Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economia Politica de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Economicas. Instituto Interdisciplinario de Economia Politica de Buenos Aires; Argentina

Capital et idéologie

Abstract: Toutes les societes humaines ont besoin de justifier leurs inegalites : il faut leur trouver des raisons, faute de quoi c'est l'ensemble de l'edifice politique et social qui menace de s'effondrer. Les ideologies du passe, si on les etudie de pres, ne sont a cet egard pas toujours plus folles que celles du present. C'est en montrant la multiplicite des trajectoires et des bifurcations possibles que l'on peut interroger les fondements de nos propres institutions et envisager les conditions de leur transformation. A partir de donnees comparatives d'une ampleur et d'une profondeur inedites, ce livre retrace dans une perspective tout a la fois economique, sociale, intellectuelle et politique l'histoire et le devenir des regimes inegalitaires, depuis les societes trifonctionnelles et esclavagistes anciennes jusqu'aux societes postcoloniales et hypercapitalistes modernes, en passant par les societes proprietaristes, coloniales, communistes et sociales-democrates. A l'encontre du recit hyperinegalitaire qui s'est impose depuis les annees 1980-1990, il montre que c'est le combat pour l'egalite et l'education, et non pas la sacralisation de la propriete, qui a permis le developpement economique et le progres humain. En s'appuyant sur les lecons de l'histoire globale, il est possible de rompre avec le fatalisme qui nourrit les derives identitaires actuelles et d'imaginer un socialisme participatif pour le XXIe siecle : un nouvel horizon egalitaire a visee universelle, une nouvelle ideologie de l'egalite, de la propriete sociale, de l'education et du partage des savoirs et des pouvoirs.

Capital et idéologie

Abstract: Toutes les societes humaines ont besoin de justifier leurs inegalites : il faut leur trouver des raisons, faute de quoi c'est l'ensemble de l'edifice politique et social qui menace de s'effondrer. Les ideologies du passe, si on les etudie de pres, ne sont a cet egard pas toujours plus folles que celles du present. C'est en montrant la multiplicite des trajectoires et des bifurcations possibles que l'on peut interroger les fondements de nos propres institutions et envisager les conditions de leur transformation.A partir de donnees comparatives d'une ampleur et d'une profondeur inedites, ce livre retrace dans une perspective tout a la fois economique, sociale, intellectuelle et politique l'histoire et le devenir des regimes inegalitaires, depuis les societes trifonctionnelles et esclavagistes anciennes jusqu'aux societes postcoloniales et hypercapitalistes modernes, en passant par les societes proprietaristes, coloniales, communistes et sociales-democrates. A l'encontre du recit hyperinegalitaire qui s'est impose depuis les annees 1980-1990, il montre que c'est le combat pour l'egalite et l'education, et non pas la sacralisation de la propriete, qui a permis le developpement economique et le progres humain.En s'appuyant sur les lecons de l'histoire globale, il est possible de rompre avec le fatalisme qui nourrit les derives identitaires actuelles et d'imaginer un socialisme participatif pour le XXIe siecle : un nouvel horizon egalitaire a visee universelle, une nouvelle ideologie de l'egalite, de la propriete sociale, de l'education et du partage des savoirs et des pouvoirs.

Simplified Distributional National Accounts

Abstract: Piketty, Saez, and Zucman (2018) (hereafter PSZ) propose a method to distribute total national income across individual adults in the United States. The method has recently been applied to a number of countries as reviewed in the World Inequality Report 2018 (Alvaredo et al. 2018). The key advantage relative to earlier work using fiscal income such as Piketty and Saez (2003) or survey data is that the national income concept is comprehensive, homogeneous over time, and comparable across countries. In particular, distributional national income statistics can be used to study both growth and inequality in a consistent framework that aggregates cleanly to national income from national accounts. In contrast, fiscal income or survey income aggregates display growth levels that are quite different from national income growth both in the short-term year-to-year fluctuations and in the long-term growth rates averaged over decades (see PSZ for a detailed discussion).

Accounting for Wealth Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates and Simulations for France

Abstract: Measuring and understanding the evolution of wealth inequality is a key challenge for researchers, policy makers, and the general public. This paper breaks new ground on this topic by presenting a new method to estimate and study wealth inequality. This method combines fiscal data with household surveys and national accounts in order to provide annual wealth distribution series, with detailed breakdowns by percentiles, age and assets. Using the case of France as an illustration, we show that the resulting series can be used to better analyze the evolution and the determinants of wealth inequality dynamics over the 1970-2014 period. We show that the decline in wealth inequality ends in the early 1980s, marking the beginning of a rise in the top 1% wealth share, though with significant fluctuations due largely to asset price movements. Rising inequality in saving rates coupled with highly stratified rates of returns has led to rising wealth concentration in spite of the opposing effect of house price increases. We develop a simple simulation model highlighting how changes in the combination of unequal saving rates, rates of return and labor earnings that occurred in the early 1980s generated large multiplicative effects that led to radically different steady-state levels of wealth inequality. Taking advantage of the joint distribution of income and wealth, we show that top wealth holders are almost exclusively top capital earners, and less and less are made up of top labor earners; it has become increasingly difficult in recent decades to access top wealth groups with one’s labor income only.

Growing Cleavages in India? Evidence from the Changing Structure of Party Electorates, 1962-2014

Abstract: This paper combines surveys, election results and social spending data to document the long-run evolution of political cleavages in India. From a dominantparty system featuring the Indian National Congress as the main actor of the mediation of political conflicts, Indian politics have gradually come to include a number of smaller regionalist parties and, more recently, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These changes coincide with the rise of religious divisions and the persistence of strong caste-based cleavages, while education, income and occupation play little role (controlling for caste) in determining voters' choices. We find no evidence that India's new party system has been associated with changes in social policy. While BJP-led states are generally characterized by a smaller social sector, switching to a party representing upper castes or upper classes has no significant effect on social spending. We interpret this as evidence that voters seem to be less driven by straightforward economic interests than by sectarian interests and cultural priorities. In India, as in many Western democracies, political conflicts have become increasingly focused on identity and religious-ethnic conflicts rather than on tangible material benefits and class-based redistribution.