The Return of “Patrimonial Capitalism”: A Reviewof Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty - one of the most widely discussed economic books in the last decade - provides a unified theory of the functioning of the capitalist economy by linking theories of economic growth and functional and personal income distributions. It argues, based on the long-run historical data series, that the forces of economic divergence (including rising income inequality) tend to dominate in capitalism. It regards the twentieth century as an exception to this rule and proposes policies that would make capitalism sustainable in the twenty-first century.