Inequality

Archive for Inequality

Intro Notes on Economic Inequality

In case you are new to this stuff and don’t like all that book-learnin’, some intro thoughts. Some excerpts: First of all, there’s a distinction between income and wealth. The top 1% of income earners aren’t necessarily the same group of people as the wealthiest 1%. For example, imagine a small hedge fund manager in […]

More Piketty Stuff

==> Piketty only regrets not jacking those trend lines up even more, because of the blockbuster March 2014 PowerPoint. ==> Scott Winship clarifies just how ambiguous the data really are, notwithstanding Krugman’s recent “denier” finger-wagging. ==> Speaking of which, in that article Krugman linked to a Kopczuk paper to bolster Krugman’s claims that everybody knows […]

Do “Productivity” and Lagging Wage Growth Disprove Marginal Productivity Theory?

In response to my book review of Piketty, where I claimed in my cutesy “Jetsons” example that a slow-down in capital accumulation would reduce the growth in workers’ real incomes, people have been throwing BLS charts in my face. To take an example from today, on Twitter: @libertarianJ @PorphyConob @BobMurphyEcon "more physically productive per hour, […]

Scott Sumner Learns the Truth About Piketty Firsthand

I just love it when I see people first read Piketty and post their reactions (on FB or blogs) to the effect of, “Wait a second… Is he really saying that? Am I missing something?” Scott Sumner has such a post; this is truly the third such post I’ve seen from a college professor in […]

Full Review of Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century

Carlos Lara and I put out a monthly financial magazine, the Lara-Murphy Report. In May I had a full-length review of Piketty. The best way I could think to showcase it here, was to do screen shots of the pages. So here ya go:

Yawn Two More Experts on Growth and Inequality Say Piketty Is Totally Wrong

Steve Landsburg links to this Note by Krussell and Smith on Piketty. These guys are experts in this field; for example here’s one of their joint papers on wealth and income inequality in the JPE. Short version of their current Note: Like Larry Summers, they claim that once you account for depreciation, Piketty’s whole case […]

Potpourri

==> BusinessWeek explains why the 1% (annualized) drop in GDP in the first quarter is good news for the economy. Hint: it involves inventories. Oh boy. ==> Be careful, this article says the government is reporting that “food price inflation” is running at a 22% annual rate, YTD. But no, if you click the link […]

The Entire Inequality Debate Summed Up In One Chart

I missed this on my first look, but the most widely cited PowerPoint presentation of all-time–namely Saez-Zucman (2014)–has a chart that explicitly contrasts Saez’s latest findings with his 2004 paper (co-authored with Kopczuk). Here’s the slide: We see the same pattern as I pointed out earlier, where the Saez (2004) and (2014) estimates move in […]