To quote from the Economist article about this yesterday: > There are four important questions raised by the FT's work. First, which data are wrong? ... > "Ca

To quote from the Economist article about this yesterday: > There are four important questions raised by the FT's work. First, which data are wrong? ... > "Capital" is a sprawling book based on an enormous pile of reference material and data. Much of the data was collected by Mr Piketty and other economists in a series of published papers that have since been used to create the World Top Incomes Database. None of this work appears to be at issue. Rather, Mr Giles focuses on wealth inequality, to which Mr Piketty turns in Chapter 10 of his book. Mr Piketty has not published nearly as much research on the question of wealth inequality, and it seems that much of the analysis in Chapter 10 was done specifically for the book, based on others' research. Mr Piketty's wealth-inequality analysis certainly matters as a component of the book's argument, but it is not accurate to say, as Mr Giles does, that the results in Chapter 10 constitute the "central theme" of the book. So your two proposition are not contradictory. Piketty's principle historical work was published before the book, in peer-reviewed journals, and that is different from the analysis which is being criticized.