After Piketty

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year An intellectual excursion of a kind rarely offered by modern economics. Foreign Affairs Thomas Pikettys Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the most widely discussed work of economics in recent years. But are its analyses of inequality and economic growth on target? Where should researchers go from there in exploring the ideas Piketty pushed to the forefront of global conversation? A cast of leading economists and other social scientistsincluding Emmanuel Saez, Branko Milanovic, Laura Tyson, and Michael Spencetackle these questions in dialogue with Piketty. A fantastic introduction to Pikettys main argument in Capital, and to some of the main criticisms, including doubt that his key equationshowing that returns on capital grow faster than the economywill hold true in the long run. Nature Pikettys worklaid bare just how ill-equipped our existing frameworks are for understanding, predicting, and changing inequality. This extraordinary collection shows that our most nimble social scientists are responding to the challenge. Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan