Capital and Wealth in the 21st Century

No 20919, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty uses the market value of tradeable assets to measure both productive capital and wealth. As a measure of wealth this is problematic because it ignores the value of human capital and transfer wealth, which have grown enormously over the last 300 years. Thus the constancy of the wealth/income ratio as portrayed in his data is an illusion. Further, the types of wealth that he does not measure are more equally distributed than tradeable assets. The approach also incorrectly identifies capital gains due to reduced discount rates as increases in the capital stock.

JEL-codes: D31 Y3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
Note: EFG
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Published as Weil, D. (2015). Capital and Wealth in the Twenty-First Century. The American Economic Review, 105(5), 34-37.

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