Thomas Piketty (b. 1971) is a French economist whose central area of study is public economics and related issues. His best-known work is Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Le Capital au XXIe siècle, 2013), which offered a view of the history of wealth and inequality that has attracted both considerable praise and criticism. Piketty argues that the return on capital exceeds economic growth, meaning that capital accumulates faster than the economy itself. Moreover, capital is unevenly distributed, so the growth of wealth also increases inequality.However, Piketty does not necessarily advocate an anti-capitalist position, as he maintains that capitalism can slow the expansion of capital, though not reverse it. Estonian readers now have the opportunity to pick up one of Piketty’s more recent works, A Brief History of Equality (Une brève histoire de l’égalité). The work has been described both as a historical overview of wealth distribution and as a manifesto in which the author seeks ways to reduce – or even eliminate – economic inequality.
Thomas Piketty
