Ignoring the merits or not of the criticisms, I did find it interesting to compare how much effort the FT and Economist put into finding errors in this work and how much exposure they gave their findings, compared with the way they have largely ignored problems in other far more influential studies that were much more flawed.<p>For example Tol 2009, a flawed paper about the economic impacts of climate change which concluded that moderate warming would be economically beneficial[1]. That was cited (although not generally named) in numerous FT and Economist editorials and opinion pieces over the years yet as far as I'm aware they have not published anything about the recent correction. It was used as the basis for serious national and international policy and has contaminated many subsequent studies in the field. For years the author made regular appearances pushing the importance of the finding in western media. Yet even a fairly basic review of the paper would have spotted some of the errors (it was a meta-analysis and some of the values from other paper were copied incorrectly or had the sign reversed) i.e. even an FT intern could have spotted the mistakes. Updates to the paper indicate that the entire result was based on fitting a curve to a single outlier (a study by the same author) and additional studies since 2009 give a very different picture when included.<p>As far as I'm aware Piketty's work has had little to no real world impact as yet to government policy or widespread public opinion (I might be wrong of course). Any errors it contained, while worth correcting, don't seem like they would have an earth shattering impact worthy of front page exposure and double page spreads while retractions in more influential studies go unreported.<p>[1] More about that here: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/23/the-gremlins-did-it-iffy-curve-fit-drives-strong-policy-conclusions/" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/2...</a> and <a href="http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/tols-corrections/" rel="nofollow">http://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/tols-co...</a>
The article quotes from a critic of Piketty, Scott Winship, but the strange nature of of the quotes (highly selective and including quotes on irrelevant matters) made me suspicious. Here are the latest tweets on the matter by him:<p>1/Quoted in Bloomberg today re #Piketty but sounds like I side w him on rising wealth ineq & US wealth ineq>Europe.<p>2/To be clear, I don't. Think his original results failed to make that case, which is why I'm less worked up than some abt alleged probs.<p>3/But UK--&, I now believe, US--methods need to be explained by #Piketty, else looks pretty bad. Just not CONSEQUENTIAL 4 overall thesis<p>This is the part of the article that quotes Winship:<p>> Scott Winship, an economist at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and notable critic of Piketty's analysis, said the FT's allegations weren't "significant for the fundamental question of whether Piketty's thesis is right or not". In an email to Bloomberg news agency, he wrote: "It's hard to think Piketty did something unethical when he put it up there for people like me to delve into his figures and find something that looks sketchy … Piketty has been as good or better than anyone at both making all his data available and documenting what he does generally."
I'd always thought Financial Times was a very decent news journal outlet, sure a little right-inclined but generally trustable much like the Economist. I thought they wouldn't be up to dirty tricks, then I saw the image they used for the Piketty article: <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e1f343ca-e281-11e3-89fd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz32phbsY00" rel="nofollow">http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e1f343ca-e281-11e3-89fd-00144...</a><p>They deliberately used that image (scratching his head, looking confused, etc.) to paint a certain narrative. That's just a really low way to go.
On the one hand, Krugman, Summers, and other economists praise Piketty primarily for his unique, groundbreaking empirical work on income inequality.<p>On the other hand, when FT critique his empirical work, Piketty says that his work has already been superceded by other work that proves income inequality is growing. So nothing the FT can say about Piketty's work will overturn this now well established fact.<p>So which is it? I'm inclined to go with the former, because those economists focused on Piketty's empirical work and downplayed his theoretical work and policy suggestions. And my own knowledge of economics informs me that detailed empirical work of this sort is not done enough. So I think that while Piketty might consider the empirical part of his book to be a detail, in fact it is a very important matter. All that remains is how valid FT's criticism is, and how much it changes the results.
The rich get richer faster than others because they're better at it... That's why they're rich in the first place. Does it take 700 pages to understand it?<p>Think about it: most people don't even try to get richer !
I love the classical "he said, she said".<p>The fact is, Piketty's numbers appear to be incorrect. It is no longer remotely close to clear that <i>wealth</i> inequality is going up, particularly at the top, at least from what we see in Piketty's book. The FT corrections show that inequality has not increased in the UK, and different weighting schemes (e.g. population weighting across countries) can completely make his effects vanish.<p>Krugman showed that income inequality, particularly below the 99'th percentile, is going up. Income (including capital income) != wealth.<p>Now maybe other sources prove him correct. If so, this response is far from convincing - why not just cite those other sources? And if that's the case, why did anyone care about his book to begin with?<p>In any case, Piketty is to be commended for releasing his data/methodology. Just think - if he didn't do this, it would have taken years for his errors to be discovered.