IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/20919.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Capital and Wealth in the 21st Century

Author

Listed:
  • David N. Weil

Abstract

In Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty uses the market value of tradeable assets to measure both productive capital and wealth. As a measure of wealth this is problematic because it ignores the value of human capital and transfer wealth, which have grown enormously over the last 300 years. Thus the constancy of the wealth/income ratio as portrayed in his data is an illusion. Further, the types of wealth that he does not measure are more equally distributed than tradeable assets. The approach also incorrectly identifies capital gains due to reduced discount rates as increases in the capital stock.

Suggested Citation

  • David N. Weil, 2015. "Capital and Wealth in the 21st Century," NBER Working Papers 20919, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20919
    Note: EFG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20919.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for Cross-Country Income Differences," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 679-741, Elsevier.
    2. Robert C. Feenstra & Robert Inklaar & Marcel P. Timmer, 2015. "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3150-3182, October.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. Charles I. Jones, 2002. "Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in a World of Ideas," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 220-239, March.
    6. Costa, Dora L., 1998. "The Evolution of Retirement," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226116082, August.
    7. James M. Poterba, 2014. "Retirement Security in an Aging Population," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 1-30, May.
    8. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for cross-country income differences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 3567, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Dale Jorgenson & Barbara M. Fraumeni, 1989. "The Accumulation of Human and Nonhuman Capital, 1948-84," NBER Chapters, in: The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth, pages 227-286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Caselli, Francesco, 2005. "Accounting for cross-country income differences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 5266, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Ronald Lee & Andrew Mason (ed.), 2011. "Population Aging and the Generational Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13816.
    12. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong Wha, 2013. "A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 184-198.
    13. Pritchett, Lant, 2000. "The Tyranny of Concepts: CUDIE (Cumulated, Depreciated, Investment Effort) Is Not Capital," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 361-384, December.
    14. Dora L. Costa, 1998. "The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880-1990," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number cost98-1.
    15. John W. Kendrick, 1976. "The Formation and Stocks of Total Capital," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number kend76-1.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1eob9f9aas9q18hfjsiqhggvi2 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Bonnet, Odran & Chapelle, Guillaume & Trannoy, Alain & Wasmer, Etienne, 2021. "Land is back, it should be taxed, it can be taxed," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    3. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/56k383m9o9kpb1g6f8rvv74ok is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Odran Bonnet & Guillaume Flamerie de La Chapelle & Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, 2019. "Secular Trends in Wealth and Heterogeneous Capital: Land is Back... and Should Be Taxed," Working Papers hal-03570837, HAL.
    5. David N. Weil, 2015. "Capital and Wealth in the Twenty-First Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 34-37, May.
    6. Adam Looney & Kevin B. Moore, 2015. "Changes in the Distribution of After-Tax Wealth: Has Income Tax Policy Increased Wealth Inequality?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015-58, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Tarrazo, Manuel, 2018. "Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century and modern finance: The other [r−g] relationship," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 162-174.
    8. Odran Bonnet & Guillaume Chapelle & Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, 2019. "Secular Trends in Wealth and Heterogeneous Capital: Land is Back... and Should Be Taxed," Sciences Po publications 2019-14, Sciences Po.
    9. Soon Ryoo, 2018. "Top income shares and aggregate wealth-income ratio in a two-class corporate economy [Growth and distribution in heterodox models with managers and financiers]," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 42(3), pages 699-728.
    10. Nicolas Canry, 2019. "Why and How Should Human Capital be Measured in National Accounts? [Pourquoi et Comment mesurer le capital humain dans la comptabilité nationale ?]," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-02354709, HAL.
    11. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/56k383m9o9kpb1g6f8rvv74ok is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Odran Bonnet & Guillaume Flamerie de la Chapelle & Alain Trannoy & Etienne Wasmer, 2019. "Secular trends in Wealth and Heterogeneous Capital: Land is back...and should be taxed," SciencePo Working papers hal-03541411, HAL.
    13. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/1eob9f9aas9q18hfjsiqhggvi2 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Nicolas Canry, 2019. "Why and How Should Human Capital be Measured in National Accounts? [Pourquoi et Comment mesurer le capital humain dans la comptabilité nationale ?]," Post-Print halshs-02354709, HAL.
    15. Jesse Bricker & Alice Henriques & Jacob Krimmel & John Sabelhaus, 2016. "Measuring Income and Wealth at the Top Using Administrative and Survey Data," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 47(1 (Spring), pages 261-331.
    16. Michele Battisti & Giovanni Bernardo & Andrea Mario Lavezzi & Giuseppe Maggio, 2019. "Shooting down the price: evidence from mafia homicides and housing market volatility," Working Paper series 19-05, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.

    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. Oscar Hernán Cerquera Losada & María de los Ángeles Clavijo Tovar & Carla Yanella Pérez Peña, 2022. "Capital humano y crecimiento económico: evidencia empírica para Suramérica," Apuntes del Cenes, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, vol. 41(73), pages 143-167, February.
    2. Rui Castro & Pavel Ševčík, 2024. "Occupational choice, human capital and financial constraints," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(3), pages 674-703, August.
    3. Tarek M Harchaoui & Murat Üngör, 2018. "The Lion on the Move Towards the World Frontier: Catching Up or Remaining Stuck?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 27(3), pages 251-273.
    4. Acikgoz, Senay & Ben Ali, Mohamed Sami, 2019. "Where does economic growth in the Middle Eastern and North African countries come from?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 172-183.
    5. Li, Y. & Murshed, S.M. & Papyrakis, E., 2021. "Public capital and income inequality: some empirical evidence," ISS Working Papers - General Series 677, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    6. Alexander Monge-Naranjo & Juan M. Sánchez & Raül Santaeulàlia-Llopis, 2019. "Natural Resources and Global Misallocation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 79-126, April.
    7. Gupta, Sanjeev & Kangur, Alvar & Papageorgiou, Chris & Wane, Abdoul, 2014. "Efficiency-Adjusted Public Capital and Growth," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 164-178.
    8. Barker, Tom & Üngör, Murat, 2019. "Vietnam: The next asian Tiger?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 96-118.
    9. Jones, C.I., 2016. "The Facts of Economic Growth," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 3-69, Elsevier.
    10. Ana Hidalgo-Cabrillana & Zoë Kuehn & Cristina Lopez-Mayan, 2017. "Development accounting using PIAAC data," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 373-399, November.
    11. Lenkei, Balint & Mustafa, Ghulam & Vecchi, Michela, 2018. "Growth in emerging economies: Is there a role for education?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 240-253.
    12. Ruba A. Aljarallah & Andrew Angus, 2020. "Dilemma of Natural Resource Abundance: A Case Study of Kuwait," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(1), pages 21582440198, January.
    13. Nadir Altinok & Claude Diebolt, 2024. "Cliometrics of learning-adjusted years of schooling: evidence from a new dataset," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 18(3), pages 691-764, September.
    14. Lutz Hendricks & Todd Schoellman, 2018. "Human Capital and Development Accounting: New Evidence from Wage Gains at Migration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 665-700.
    15. Santos, João & Borges, Afonso S. & Domingos, Tiago, 2021. "Exploring the links between total factor productivity and energy efficiency: Portugal, 1960–2014," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    16. Campbell, Susanna G. & Üngör, Murat, 2020. "Revisiting human capital and aggregate income differences," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 43-64.
    17. Zaytsev, Alexander, 2015. "Межстрановые Различия В Душевых Ввп И Производительности Труда: Роль Капитала, Уровня Технологий И Природной Ренты [International differences in per capita GDP and labor productivity: role of capit," MPRA Paper 71606, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised May 2016.
    18. Kevin S. Nell, 2018. "Conditional Divergence in the Post-1989 Globalisation Period," CEF.UP Working Papers 1806, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    19. Nikita Céspedes & Pablo Lavado & Nelson Ramírez (ed.), 2016. "Productividad en el Perú: medición, determinantes e implicancias," Books, Departamento de Economía, Universidad del Pacífico, edition 1, number 07-14.
    20. Arif, Imran, 2019. "How Tall Are the Paper Walls? Barriers to International Mobility and Technology Diusion," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 49(2), October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • Y3 - Miscellaneous Categories - - Book Reviews

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:20919. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.