IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ove/journl/aid10637.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Missing equation in Piketty’s r-g theory

Author

Listed:
  • Yasunori Fujita

Abstract

Although Thomas Piketty has revolutionized our understanding of inequality, logic behind his r-g theory is not developed formally in his researches. The present paper, by finding out the missing part of Piketty’s r-g theory, present a complete version of Piketty’s framework. It is revealed that necessary and sufficient condition for the r-g theory is S Y ( t )+ A Y ( t )= C F ( t ). That is, savings in a broad sense (left hand side) is equal to the consumption using financial capital (right hand side). We also reveal that the problem is not in the Second Fundamental Law of Capitalism, but in the formulation of capital accumulation dynamics. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the two Fundamental Laws of Capitalism are not necessary for deriving the r-g theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Yasunori Fujita, 2015. "Missing equation in Piketty’s r-g theory," Economics and Business Letters, Oviedo University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 57-62.
    • Handle: RePEc:ove:journl:aid:10637
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/EBL/article/view/10637
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    2. Thomas Piketty, 2011. "On the Long-Run Evolution of Inheritance: France 1820--2050," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(3), pages 1071-1131.
    3. Thomas Piketty & Gabriel Zucman, 2014. "Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700–2010," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(3), pages 1255-1310.
    4. Charles I. Jones, 2015. "Pareto and Piketty: The Macroeconomics of Top Income and Wealth Inequality," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 29-46, Winter.
    5. Robert Rowthorn, 2014. "A Note on Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Working Papers wp462, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    6. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2014. "Inequality in the long run," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-01053609, HAL.
    7. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00847231 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Branko Milanovic, 2014. "The Return of "Patrimonial Capitalism": A Review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(2), pages 519-534, June.
    9. Milanovic, Branko, 2013. "The return of “patrimonial capitalism”: review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st century," MPRA Paper 52384, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1969. "Distribution of Income and Wealth among Individuals," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(3), pages 382-397, July.
    11. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01207273 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Thomas Piketty, 2015. "Putting Distribution Back at the Center of Economics: Reflections on Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 29(1), pages 67-88, Winter.
    13. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "The Top 1% in International and Historical Perspective," Post-Print halshs-00847231, HAL.
    14. Robert Rowthorn, 2014. "A note on Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 38(5), pages 1275-1284.
    15. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2003. "Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 1-41.
    16. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01109372 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Branko Milanovic, 2014. "The Return of "Patrimonial Capitalism": A Review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(2), pages 519-534, June.
    18. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "The Top 1 Percent in International and Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(3), pages 3-20, Summer.
    19. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01053609 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frank A. Cowell & Philippe Kerm, 2015. "Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 671-710, September.
    2. David Strauss & Daniel Ventosa-Santaularia, 2023. "Does r-g cause wealth inequality? The case of the United States/¿La r-g causa la desigualdad de la riqueza? El caso de Estados Unidos," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 38(2), pages 183-224.
    3. Galvin, Ray & Sunikka-Blank, Minna, 2018. "Economic Inequality and Household Energy Consumption in High-income Countries: A Challenge for Social Science Based Energy Research," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 78-88.
    4. Atanu Ghoshray & Issam Malki & Javier Ordóñez, 2022. "On the long-run dynamics of income and wealth inequality," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 375-408, February.
    5. Holger M. Mueller & Paige P. Ouimet & Elena Simintzi, 2015. "Wage Inequality and Firm Growth," LIS Working papers 632, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    6. Marisa Civardi & Renata Targetti Lenti, 2018. "Can the link between functional and personal income distribution enhance the analysis of inequality?," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 65(2), pages 137-156, June.
    7. Mehdi el Herradi & Jakob de Haan & Aurélien Leroy, 2020. "Inflation and the Income Share of the Rich: Evidence for 12 OECD Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 8203, CESifo.
    8. Mehdi El Herradi & Jakob Haan & Aurélien Leroy, 2023. "Inflation and the Income Share of the Rich: Evidence for 14 OECD Countries," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 69(1), pages 170-194, March.
    9. Christou, Christina & Gupta, Rangan & Jawadi, Fredj, 2021. "Does inequality help in forecasting equity premium in a panel of G7 countries?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    10. Lieberknecht, Philipp & Vermeulen, Philip, 2018. "Inequality and relative saving rates at the top," Working Paper Series 2204, European Central Bank.
    11. Estrada, Fernando, 2015. "Antinomies de Le Capital au XXIe siècle [Antinomies of Capital in the 21st Century]," MPRA Paper 61126, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Emmanuel Chavez & Gerardo Esquivel, 2017. "Growth is (really) good for the (really) rich," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(12), pages 2639-2675, December.
    13. Lilia Costabile, 2015. "A note on Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and its critics," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 32(3), pages 377-385, December.
    14. MADSEN, Jakob B, 2018. "Is Inequality Increasing in r-g? The Dynamics of Capital’s Income Share in the UK, 1210-2013," Discussion paper series HIAS-E-70, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    15. Filippo Gusella & Anna Maria Variato, 2021. "Financial Instability and Income Inequality: why the connection Minsky-Piketty matters for Macroeconomics," Working Papers - Economics wp2021_15.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    16. Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Thomas Piketty, 2017. "Income Inequality in France, 1900-2014: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts," Working Papers 201704, World Inequality Lab.
    17. Yuri Biondi & Simone Righi, 2019. "Inequality, mobility and the financial accumulation process: a computational economic analysis," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(1), pages 93-119, March.
    18. Cabral, René & García-Díaz, Rocío & Mollick, André Varella, 2016. "Does globalization affect top income inequality?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 916-940.
    19. Burkhauser, Richard V. & Herault, Nicolas & Jenkins, Stephen P. & Wilkins, Roger, 2016. "What Has Been Happening to UK Income Inequality since the Mid-1990s? Answers from Reconciled and Combined Household Survey and Tax Return Data," IZA Discussion Papers 9718, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Mirza, M. Usman & Richter, Andries & van Nes, Egbert H. & Scheffer, Marten, 2019. "Technology driven inequality leads to poverty and resource depletion," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 215-226.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ove:journl:aid:10637. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Francisco J. Delgado (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deovies.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.