Thanks for getting back to me Professor, I really appreciate it, and your comments, which I will definitely take into account.
It is certainly a substantial tome, and if people feel it is appropriate, I am more than happy to extend the timetable for this project to months, rather than weeks, which I appreciate may have been somewhat ambitious!
Either way, I can't help but feel that this venue would be a very interesting place to have this conversation, though I should perhaps consider that there are just over 300 people on this list, many of whom may not agree!
All best wishes,
Jacob
Sorry, I have only started to read Piketty's book and will not finish reading it before your June 6 deadline.
I dont think there was a long line of researchers who did similar work before him, but OECD published good statistics for the last few decades since about 2008. I learned about the growth of inequality in the big industrial countries from the OECD study of 2011, before I learned from Piketty and his colleagues (Saez, ...) in early 2013 about his much longer time series for the USA income of the top 1 percent. Thus the people who are now so much excited about Piketty's BOOK have obviously missed his earlier work on which the book is based.
I also recommend to distinguish between his presentation of empirical data and his policy recommnendations.
Dietrich Stauffer
Formerly in editorial board of Quantitative Finance, now retired.
On Fri, 23 May 2014, Jacob Bettany wrote:
Dear Members,
Thomas Piketty's book, 'Capital in the 21st Century' has generated an enormous amount of coverage in recent months, fueling the debate about inequality and wealth, and further raising the profile of wealth distributions which have been studied closely by the econophysics community for many years.
I am extremely curious about the views of the members of this list on this topic, and the extent to which the empirical work done by the community chimes with Piketty's, and would like to invite you to comment on the statement:
"Thomas Piketty is only the latest in a long line of researchers who have studied wealth distributions with a view to understanding inequality."
If you would like to send me your views I would be more than happy - with your permission - to publish them at MoneyScience and bring this community into the debate in a formal way.
Please feel free to share your opinions with the list at [log in to unmask]AC.UK or send them directly to me, [log in to unmask]. If you could also state explicitly whether you would be willing for me to publish at MoneyScience that would also be helpful.
If you could try to keep your responses between 500 and 1000 words, and get them over to me in 2 weeks time, by Friday June 6th that would be great, I will aim to publish in the following week, and we can possibly open up for a second round of responses in the weeks following.
Thank you very much for your time.
Jacob Bettany
P.S. for reference, you may be interested in an interview with Picketty which can be found here: http://qz.com/200213/ten-questions-for-thomas-piketty-the-economist-who-exposed-capitalisms-fatal-flaw/