
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.…
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Taxonomy
TopicsEconomic Theory and Policy · Income, Poverty, and Inequality · Political Economy and Marxism
MethodsAdam
