Introduction to: After Piketty: The Research Program Starting from Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century http://delong.typepad.com/2016-08-31-piketty-volume-intro_hb052516.pdf
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an astonishing, surprise bestseller.
Its enormous mass audience speaks to the urgency with which so many wish to hear about and participate in the political-economic conversation regarding this Second Gilded Age in which we in the Global North now find ourselves enmeshed.1 C21’s English-language translator Art Goldhammer reports (this volume) that there are now 2.2 million copies of the book scattered around the globe in 30 different languages. Those 2.2 million copies cannot and should not but have an impact. They ought to shift the spirit of the age into another, different channel: post-Piketty, the public-intellectual debate over inequality, economic policy, and equitable growth ought to focus differently. We have assembled our authors and edited their papers to highlight what we, at least, believe economists should study After Piketty as they use the book to trigger more of a focus on what is relevant and important.
Link to: After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality