The Past Speaks

The fantastic Justin Fox has published an excellent review of Thomas Piketty’s capital, the hit book of the season that has shot to number one of the best seller lists and which has got everybody talking about economic inequality. Fox’s blog post deals with an issue that has been overlooked by many other reviewers of the book, namely the empirical evidence that support’s Piketty’s claims about the long-term trends in inequality. He notes that the archival record is pretty complete for post-revolutionary France but far less complete for other countries including, crucially, the United States.