Book•
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
01 Aug 2013-
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.
Abstract: A New York Times #1 Bestseller An Amazon #1 Bestseller A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Sunday Times Bestseller Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Winner of the British Academy Medal Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award "It seems safe to say that Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the magnum opus of the French economist Thomas Piketty, will be the most important economics book of the year-and maybe of the decade." -Paul Krugman, New York Times "The book aims to revolutionize the way people think about the economic history of the past two centuries. It may well manage the feat." -The Economist "Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century 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." -Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post "Piketty has written an extraordinarily important book...In its scale and sweep it brings us back to the founders of political economy." -Martin Wolf, Financial Times "A sweeping account of rising inequality...Piketty has written a book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can afford to ignore." -John Cassidy, New Yorker "Stands a fair chance of becoming the most influential work of economics yet published in our young century. It is the most important study of inequality in over fifty years." -Timothy Shenk, The Nation
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TL;DR: An emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ is described and its implications for ‘information civilization’ are considered and a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power is christened: ‘Big Other.’
Abstract: This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ The institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and ‘continuous experiments.’ An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism.
1,624 citations
National Center for Atmospheric Research1, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research2, University of Washington3, Stockholm Environment Institute4, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis5, University of Denver6, Utrecht University7, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency8, University of Stuttgart9, Wageningen University and Research Centre10, Columbia University11, Hunter College12
TL;DR: The SSP narratives as discussed by the authors is a set of five qualitative descriptions of future changes in demographics, human development, economy and lifestyle, policies and institutions, technology, and environment and natural resources, which can serve as a basis for integrated scenarios of emissions and land use, as well as climate impact, adaptation and vulnerability analyses.
Abstract: Long-term scenarios play an important role in research on global environmental change. The climate change research community is developing new scenarios integrating future changes in climate and society to investigate climate impacts as well as options for mitigation and adaptation. One component of these new scenarios is a set of alternative futures of societal development known as the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The conceptual framework for the design and use of the SSPs calls for the development of global pathways describing the future evolution of key aspects of society that would together imply a range of challenges for mitigating and adapting to climate change. Here we present one component of these pathways: the SSP narratives, a set of five qualitative descriptions of future changes in demographics, human development, economy and lifestyle, policies and institutions, technology, and environment and natural resources. We describe the methods used to develop the narratives as well as how these pathways are hypothesized to produce particular combinations of challenges to mitigation and adaptation. Development of the narratives drew on expert opinion to (1) identify key determinants of these challenges that were essential to incorporate in the narratives and (2) combine these elements in the narratives in a manner consistent with scholarship on their inter-relationships. The narratives are intended as a description of plausible future conditions at the level of large world regions that can serve as a basis for integrated scenarios of emissions and land use, as well as climate impact, adaptation and vulnerability analyses.
1,606 citations
University of Auckland1, Deakin University2, Virginia Tech3, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation4, Catholic University of Leuven5, Public Health Foundation of India6, Imperial College London7, Australian National University8, Brookings Institution9, Washington University in St. Louis10, University of Stirling11, University of London12, Harvard University13, University of Hertfordshire14, McGill University15, Drexel University16, Tehran University of Medical Sciences17, George Washington University18, Newcastle University19, Wellington Management Company20, Huazhong University of Science and Technology21, World Bank22, University of Cape Town23, University of Amsterdam24, University of Newcastle25
TL;DR: This work aims to demonstrate the efforts towards in-situ applicability of EMMARM, which aims to provide real-time information about concrete mechanical properties such as E-modulus and compressive strength.
1,480 citations
TL;DR: There has been a growing debate in the West, recently, about whether we are witnessing the phenomenon of technological unemployment caused by increasing automation in all spheres of economic activity, a form of unemployment that is distinct from cyclical unemployment, or structural unemployment causing by trade and globalisation, or even that existing in the form of a reserve army.
Abstract: There has been a growing debate in the West, recently, about whether we are witnessing the phenomenon of technological unemployment caused by increasing automation in all spheres of economic activity, a form of unemployment that is distinct from cyclical unemployment, or structural unemployment caused by trade and globalisation, or even that existing in the form of a reserve army.
993 citations
05 Feb 2018
TL;DR: Using indicators designed to measure a safe and just development space, the authors quantify the resource use associated with meeting basic human needs, and compare this to downscaled planetary boundaries for over 150 nations, finding that no country meets basic needs for its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use.
Abstract: Humanity faces the challenge of how to achieve a high quality of life for over 7 billion people without destabilizing critical planetary processes. Using indicators designed to measure a ‘safe and just’ development space, we quantify the resource use associated with meeting basic human needs, and compare this to downscaled planetary boundaries for over 150 nations. We find that no country meets basic needs for its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use. Physical needs such as nutrition, sanitation, access to electricity and the elimination of extreme poverty could likely be met for all people without transgressing planetary boundaries. However, the universal achievement of more qualitative goals (for example, high life satisfaction) would require a level of resource use that is 2–6 times the sustainable level, based on current relationships. Strategies to improve physical and social provisioning systems, with a focus on sufficiency and equity, have the potential to move nations towards sustainability, but the challenge remains substantial.
811 citations
References
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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.
Abstract: A recent literature has constructed top income shares time series over the long run for more than twenty countries using income tax statistics. Top incomes represent a small share of the population but a very significant share of total income and total taxes paid. Hence, aggregate economic growth per capita and Gini inequality indexes are sensitive to excluding or including top incomes. We discuss 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. We provide a summary of the key empirical findings. Most countries experience a dramatic drop in top income shares in the first part of the twentieth century in general due to shocks to top capital incomes during the wars and depression shocks. Top income shares do not recover in the immediate postwar decades. However, over the last thirty years, top income shares have increased substantially in English speaking countries and in India and China but not in continental European countries or Japan. This increase is due in part to an unprecedented surge in top wage incomes. As a result, wage income comprises a larger fraction of top incomes than in the past. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and empirical models that have been proposed to account for the facts and the main questions that remain open.
1,511 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that the distribution of incomes between an enumerable infinity of income ranges is assumed to develop by means of a stochastic process and that the Pareto curve of the equilibrium distribution will be asymptotic to a straight line.
Abstract: JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. A MODEL OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION SUMMARY IN the models discussed in this paper the distribution of incomes between an enumerable infinity of income ranges is assumed to develop by means of a stochastic process. In most models the stochastic matrix is assumed to remain constant through time. Under these circumstances, and provided certain other conditions are satisfied, the distribution will tend towards a unique equilibrium distribution dependent upon the stochastic matrix but not on the initial distribution. It is found that under fairly general conditions, provided the prospects of change of income as described by the matrix are in a certain sense independent of income for incomes above some limit then the Pareto curve of the equilibrium distribution will be asymptotic to a straight line. This result is preserved even when some of the effects of age on income are allowed for, and also when allowance is made for the effect of an occupational stratification of the population. Some consideration is also given to the fact that changes in the income distribution may cause the stochastic matrix itself to change. Some discussion is also given of cases where the Pareto curve of the equilibrium distribution is not asymptotic to a straight line. ? 1. INTRODUCTION In a recent article 1 instructions were given for graduating the distribution of personal incomes before tax by means of the distribution function (1.1) F(t)= =N tan' sin G '~0 Cos 6 + (t/t0)a-where F(t) is the number of incomes exceeding t, and N, a, to and 0 are fitted parameters. For high incomes this formula closely approximates the, form (1.2) F(t) Ct-= with = too, sin 0 which is the form predicted by Pareto's law. It has been frequently claimed that actual distributions do 1 Champernowne [3]. See references at the end of this article. JUNE 1953] A MODEL OF INCOME DISTRIBUTION 319 approximate closely to this form for high income levels, and it is the purpose of this note to seek theoretical reasons for this. I am indebted to Mr. M. Crum of New College, Oxford, for critical advice and enabling me to correct …
710 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used 1970-2010 national balance sheets of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France to investigate how the aggregate wealth-to-income ratios evolve in the long run and why.
Abstract: How do aggregate wealth-to-income ratios evolve in the long run and why? We address this question using 1970–2010 national balance sheets recently compiled in the top eight developed economies. For the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France, we are able to extend our analysis as far back as 1700. We find in every country a gradual rise‘ of wealth-income ratios in recent decades, from about 200–300% in 1970 to 400–600% in 2010. In effect, today’s ratios appear to be returning to the high values observed in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (600–700%). This can be explained by a long-run asset price recovery (itself driven by changes in capital policies since the world wars) and by the slowdown of productivity and population growth, in line with the �¼ s g Harrod-Domar-Solow formula. That is, for a given net saving
639 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take stock of recent progress that has been made in this area and present a number of basic facts regarding the long-run evolution of income and wealth inequality in advanced countries.
Abstract: The distribution of income and wealth is a widely discussed and controversial topic. Do the dynamics of private capital accumulation inevitably lead to the concentration of income and wealth in ever fewer hands, as Karl Marx believed in the 19th century? Or do the balancing forces of growth, competition, and technological progress lead in later stages of development to reduced inequality and greater harmony among the classes, as Simon Kuznets thought in the 20th century? What do we know about how income and wealth have evolved since the 18th century, and what lessons can we derive from that knowledge for the century now under way? For a long time, social science research on the distribution of income and wealth was based on a relatively limited set of firmly established facts together with a wide variety of purely theoretical speculations. In this Review, we take stock of recent progress that has been made in this area. We present a number of basic facts regarding the longrun evolution of income and wealth inequality in advanced countries. We then discuss possible interpretations and lessons for the future.
568 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider a simple model of accumulation with a linear savings function, a constant reproduction rate, homogeneous labor, and equal division of wealth among one's heirs.
Abstract: We begin by considering a simple model of accumulation, with a linear savings function, a constant reproduction rate, homogeneous labor, and equal division of wealth among one's heirs. In such an economy, if the balanced growth path is stable, all wealth and income is asymptotically evenly distributed, with the possible exception, in the case of negative savings at zero income, of a group with zero wealth. In the process of accumulation, there may, however, be a period during which wealth becomes less evenly distributed. We then show that the basic conclusions are unaltered under a variety of alternative savings assumptions, where savings is a function of wealth or of the distribution of income, or where savings is a nonlinear concave function of income, and that variable rates of reproduction make no difference at least to the asymptotic results. The effects of alternative taxes on the speed of equalization are investigated in Section 4, and in Section 5 we consider a simple example to see the order of magnitudes of time that are involved in the equalization process. In the remaining sections of the paper, we investigate the "forces for inequality":
537 citations