Paul Krugman calls it "the most important economics book of the year - and maybe of the decade. The New Yorker Magazine says it's a book that "nobody can afford to ignore." And not to be outdone in the kudos category, The New York Times Magazine says that its the "blockbuster economics book of the season."
What are they all raving about? Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a synthesis of analyses of national accounts done over the last fifteen years with a particular focus on the hot-button issue of income and wealth inequality. I'm going to write two reviews of the book, the second a detailed analysis of the methodology employed by Piketty and his colleagues, but go below the fold for a briefer comment on the basic assumptions that underlie the work itself.
