Thomas Piketty

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present three key facts about income and wealth inequality in the long run emerging from my book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and seek to sharpen and refocus the discussion about those trends.

TL;DR: Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century as mentioned in this paper is an intellectual tour de force, a triumph of economic history over the theoretical, mathematical modeling that has come to dominate the economics profession in recent years.

TL;DR: The authors showed that the large shocks that capital owners experienced during the Great Depression and World War II have had a permanent effect on top capital incomes and argued that steep progressive income and estate taxation may have prevented large fortunes from fully recovering from these shocks.

TL;DR: A recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics as discussed by the authors, and the estimation methods and issues that arise when constructing top income share series, including income definition and comparability over time and across countries, tax avoidance and tax evasion.

TL;DR: A recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics as discussed by the authors, and the estimation methods and issues that arise when constructing top income share series, including income definition and comparability over time and across countries, tax avoidance and tax evasion.