What Piketty Said in 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' and How Economists Reacted

This work rehearses the main themes of Piketty's book and summarizes the debate it triggered. The paper dwells on the rise in the ratio of household wealth to GDP in the rich countries since the 1980s and the role played by the build-up of saving and variations in house and financial asset prices; on the various justifications put forward for the increasing income and wealth inequality that has accompanied the rise in the wealth/income ratio, especially in the US and Britain; on the relationship between the rate of return on capital and the economic growth rate; on the ties between rising income inequality and the financial crisis of 2007-08; on the feasibility of Piketty's proposals for higher taxation of top incomes and a progressive global tax on net household wealth; and on the progress that has been made in the US and Europe in exchanging information on citizens' income and foreign assets