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Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

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Re: Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

#3
post #2

Posted links to piketty's response and more detailed explication of the issues on my blog: http://wcgortel.com/pikettys-problem

Can you get the data out of the website which has Piketty's response/a rundown of the errors? The FT site is not letting people who are not registered read those. And personally, I don't want to create another account just to read that information. (I imagine a good number of people here are similar)

Re: Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

#4
The more substantive article on ft.com is here: http://blogs.ft.com/money-supply/2014/05/23/data-problems-wi...

This shows the actual errors, correcting for the errors, and the new results.

If you get an unauthorized popup, search on Google and click the top link: https://www.google.com/search?q=data-problems-with-capital-i...

Re: Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

#5
Lawrence Summers' review/criticism of Piketty's tome is worth a read, even for non Summers' fans (in general I mildly disfavor Summers, but I appreciated this piece).

"Piketty’s timing may be impeccable, and his easily understandable but slightly exotic accent perfectly suited to today’s media; but make no mistake, his work richly deserves all the attention it is receiving. This is not to say, however, that all of its conclusions will stand up to scholarly criticism from his fellow economists in the short run or to the test of history in the long run. Nor is it to suggest that his policy recommendations are either realistic or close to complete as a menu for addressing inequality.

...

Books that represent the last word on a topic are important. Books that represent one of the first words are even more important. By focusing attention on what has happened to a fortunate few among us, and by opening up for debate issues around the long-run functioning of our market system, Capital in the Twenty-First Century has made a profoundly important contribution."

http://www.democracyjournal.org/32/the-inequality-puzzle.php...

Re: Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

#6
post #2

Posted links to piketty's response and more detailed explication of the issues on my blog: http://wcgortel.com/pikettys-problem

Can you get the data out of the website which has Piketty's response/a rundown of the errors? The FT site is not letting people who are not registered read those. And personally, I don't want to create another account just to read that information. (I imagine a good number of people here are similar)

I just updated with a couple more grabs. I don't want to pull the full article, but I added in the FT's long time series chart of income inequality and conclusion though.

Re: Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

#7
In Piketty's credit, he did make this easy.

Providing data for reproducibility and replicability is relatively new in economics.

There are, however, two kinds of claims here. One is that mistakes were made, which is grounds for schadenfreude for those (like me!) who don't like the slight jumps in reasoning from "inequality is rising" to "something must be done about inequality" to "this is what must be done". For all I know, the key injustice in modern economies is topocracy:

https://encrypted.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source...

But secondly, it is claimed that he cherry-picks. Economists (we) do that. A lot. And it has to be called out.

Re: Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

#8
There are a lot of problems, they have been pointed by economists on every side of the spectrum right now, few months after the book has been published. More errors will be pointed during the years, but all the criticisms will be ignored, Piketty will be remembered as a genius for the time being and his ideas will be teached in schools and universities as if they were the God's words.

Just like happened with Keynes.

Re: Piketty's Findings Undercut by Errors

#9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you get the data out of the website which has Piketty's response/a rundown of the errors? The FT site is not letting people who are not registered read those. And personally, I don't want to create another account just to read that information. (I imagine a good number of people here are similar)

I just updated with a couple more grabs. I don't want to pull the full article, but I added in the FT's long time series chart of income inequality and conclusion though.

Thanks!
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