Thursday, March 27, 2014

Another negative review of Piketty

Capital in partial equilibrium by Ryan Decker, a Ph.D. candidate in macroeconomics:
"Many reviews have been very positive; there are a lot of positive things I could say about it, but I will leave that to others. The book suffers from some fundamental flaws; in short, while it is heavy on data it is light on serious economics. Readers will find themselves wading through hundreds of pages of opinion and ideological quips, not economic analysis, with interesting charts scattered throughout. The firehose of data can be overwhelming, which may explain why some reviewers internalized his arguments uncritically. " 
This and some other criticisms by Ryan Decker seem valid. But I think that it is also  the attractive part of the book. It is clear, allows one to understand some of the problems and think for oneself. Even parts which are somewhat technical about how inheritance still matters are explained very simply. I think that one should be taken in by all the hype but the book does make some economic questions accessible to outsiders.

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