Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century

An introduction to Thomas Piketty’s monumental work

US Nobel Prize–winner Paul Krugman described Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century as “perhaps the most important book of the last decade.” It has sparked major international debates, dominated bestseller lists and generated a level of enthusiasm—as well as intense criticism—in a way no other economic or sociological work has in a long time. Piketty has been described as a new Karl Marx and placed in the same league as the economist John Maynard Keynes.

The “rock star economist’s” underlying thesis is that inequality under capitalism has reached dramatic levels in the last few decades and continues to grow—and that this is not by chance. A small elite is making itself richer and richer…