“Piketty’s Circle and the School of Inequality”

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Abstract

This paper tries to reconstruct what seems to be a new school of economic thought, named “The Inequality School”, emerging in the 21th Century around the works of Thomas Piketty and his cowriters and collaborators of the World Inequality Lab working on the history and political economy of inequality. We try to retrace the origins and development of the school, the reasons of its success, and its leaders. Then we highlight their main characteristics, focusing on their topic, their methodology, their explanations of (rising) inequality, policy proposals and values. Finally, we underline their view of economics as a historical, political, social and moral science.

Benoît Walraevens is Associate Professor of Economic Sciences at Université Caen Normandie, France.