Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Piketty, Thomas

ISBN 10: 067443000X / ISBN 13: 9780674430006

Published by Belknap Press, Cambridge, 2014

About this Item

Flatsigned by Piketty on the title page. A near-fine copy in a near-fine jacket. Book has minor bump on front top edge; jacket has minor edge wear. Otherwise perfect. First printing.

Seller Inventory # 000662

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Capital in the Twenty-First Century
• Publisher: Belknap Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067443000X
• ISBN 13: 9780674430006
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Printing
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

A New York Times #1 Bestseller
A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller
A USA Today Bestseller
A Sunday Times Bestseller
A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century
Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Winner of the British Academy Medal
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality―the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth―today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again.

A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

About the Author

Thomas Piketty is Professor of Economics and Economic History at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and the Paris School of Economics. His books include A Brief History of Equality, Capital and Ideology, and the bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century.