Inequality in Economic History

I found the initial reactions to Piketty’s Capital interesting because assessments of the empirical analysis seemed to line up immediately on ideological grounds before anyone had a serious opportunity to evaluate so much evidence. People on the right were certain it was wrong; people on the left were sure that it was right. Both were clearly basing their conclusions on what they wanted to be true. This was particularly clear in the uncritical use of his work by the New Historians of Capitalism. See this video (41 minutes in) where Jefferson Cowie says how bad Piketty is as a historian and follows that with how he still uses his numbers blindly. What ever happened to critical evaluation of the evidence? In NHC it has been replaced by the ability to repeat clever phrases like “tyranny of the market” and “cash nexus.”  

Enough of my rant against NHC. Capital was a big book; it takes time to really evaluate the empirical work in such a book. Well, time has passed, and some of that work has now been done. In general, it does not seem to support Piketty.

Richard Sutch challenges the reliability of many of the estimates for the U.S.

Carlos Goes fails to find empirical support for the central hypothesis about inequality and capitalist development.;

Does this mean that Capital was a bad book? I don’t know. Some big idea books are serious efforts to make sense of the available information. Sometimes they turn out to been wrong in fundamental ways. I think examples of this might be Doug North’s Economic Growth of the United States (overemphasis on trade, especially, interregional trade), Fogel and Engerman’s Time on the Cross (underestimated use of coercion and overestimated nutrition), and Pomeranz’s Great Divergence (divergence appears to have started earlier than Pomeranz thought). All of these were reasonable attempts to make sense of the available information, but they prompted a lot of research which ultimately contradicted at least some of their conclusions. All of these authors, while not necessarily accepting all the critiques of their work, acknowledged when subsequent evidence persuasively contradicted their earlier interpretations. The ultimate test for Piketty will be how he responds to the critiques of his work that have provided more evidence on inequality over time.

In any case, if Piketty’s analysis of inequality is flawed, what should you read. I would suggest Lindert and Williamson’s  Unequal Gains: American Growth an Inequality. The book is very dense with descriptions of how the estimates were developed. If you are short on time you can get a preview at VOX or read Vincent Geloso’s review at Essays in Economic and Business History.