The Struggle with Inequality

TL;DR

This textbook explores the history and evolving economic theories of inequality, highlighting the renewed focus on production and distribution relationships, culminating in Piketty's influential work and future outlooks.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive historical overview and analysis of inequality theories, emphasizing the resurgence of classical concerns within modern economic frameworks and Piketty's role.

Findings

Reemergence of classical inequality concerns in modern economics

Piketty's work as a key development in the inequality debate

Historical shifts in the relationship between production and distribution

Abstract

This is an introductory textbook of the history of economics of inequality for undergraduates and genreral readers. It begins with Adam Smith's critique of Rousseau. The first and second chapters focus on Smith and Karl Marx, in the broad classical tradition of economics, where it is believed that there is an inseparable relationship between production and distribution, economic growth and inequality. Chapters 3 and 4 argue that despite the fact that the founders of the neoclassical school had shown an active interest in social issues, namely worker poverty, the issues of production and distribution became discussed separately among neoclassicals. Toward the end of the 20th century, however, there was a renewed awareness within economics of the problem of the relationship between production and distribution. The young Piketty's beginnings as an economist are set against this backdrop. Chapters 5 to 8 explain the circumstances of the restoration of classical concerns within the neoclassical framework. Then, in chapters 9 and 10, I discuss the fact that Thomas Piketty's seminal work is a new development in this "inequality renaissance," and try to gain a perspective on future trends in the debate. Mathematical appendix presents simple models of growth and distribution.