Search

The article focuses on the profound impact of Ludwig von Mises's Human Action, emphasizing its significance as a major work in economics comparable to eighteenth-century philosophical classics. Topics include Mises's contributions to technical economics, his influence on the revival of the Austrian school and Cold War intellectual movements, and his role in advancing property rights economics, law and economics, and Public Choice economics.

Neoclassical economic theories form the basis of modern economics, along with the principles of Keynesian economics. As part of economic theory, the main direction that reveals the functioning mechanism of a market economy is the neoclassical direction. In this regard, identifying the peculiarities of the relationship between the subject and method of the neoclassical direction is an urgent task, since it will make it possible to more clearly define the place of the neoclassical direction in modern economic thought, identify the theoretical basis and applicability of practical recommendations of neoclassics, in particular, more clearly define its capabilities as a theoretical basis for the formation market economy in different countries. In this article, the authors analyze the difference between neoclassical macroeconomics and microeconomics. It is shown that the microeconomic aspects of neoclassical theory have much greater theoretical and applied significance than neoclassical macroeconomics. They largely reflect real economic processes and determine the economic behavior of economic entities. The work examines, in a microeconomic aspect, the theoretical approaches of the main representatives of neoclassical theory, such as A. Marshall, L. von Mises and other representatives, to the analysis of economic processes. The authors note the importance of limit analysis, which has not only theoretical but also practical significance. The work also examines the approaches of representatives of neoclassical theory to assessing the value and price of goods and economic resources. In the real economy, markets of imperfect competition predominate, which are characterized by their own characteristics that influence the economic behavior of firms in commodity and resource markets, as evidenced by the use of marginal analysis to substantiate the position of the authors. The article assesses the views of representatives of the neoclassical school on the differences between market and planned economies. Their approach to the process of economic monopolization is characterized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economisation of social policy implied the emergence of neoclassical economics as a contestant for the foundation of social policy in theory and practice. A crucial phase in this process is the emergence of the international competition state paradigm, which urges governments to cut taxes, reduce generosity and tighten eligibility criteria for social security benefits. The adoption of the competition state paradigm reversed social policy in advanced welfare states, which used to balance the injustices of capitalism through an expansion of social citizenship rights. In Nordic welfare states, such as Denmark and Finland the advance of the competition state paradigm resulted in a clash with the constitution, which seeks to guarantee a minimum standard of living for all citizens. The economisation and subsequent reversal of the purpose of social policy was followed by increasing social inequality and a more general development characterised by a series of crises in the areas of economy, health, politics, environment, security, and global mobility. A seed of this development is endogenous, or internal, in other words, and lies in the representation of the human being associated with neoclassical economics and the competition state paradigm, according to which the pleasure-seeking human being is a potential free-rider and lazy idler in need of subordination and control. The article distinguishes between exogenous (or external) and endogenous (or internal) aspects of welfare state change and highlights our role as citizens and academics in both creating and resolving challenges related to societal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gharee for Economics & Administration Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article is an interview with Dr. Iván Bélyácz, a retired professor and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Bélyácz discusses various topics, including the adverse consequences of the market economy overtaking the real economy, the rise in inequality, and the importance of science in combating unscientific views. He also talks about the potential benefits and challenges of artificial intelligence and the need for a holistic understanding of risk and uncertainty in economic decision-making. Dr. Bélyácz reflects on his career as a researcher and emphasizes the importance of publishing and teaching in his field. He concludes by discussing his current work on the economics of risk and uncertainty and the need for a contextual understanding of financial and economic history. [Extracted from the article]

The capitalism and slavery debate is among the most significant in world historiography. This essay suggests that its main perspectives still use nation-based approaches and employ analytical categories of classical and neoclassical economics that obscure the very notion of capital. As a result, the material relations of slavery are reduced to the problem of profitability within national or colonial contexts, an approach that depicts the nineteenth-century nexus between slavery and capitalism as a transhistorical one. Against this backdrop, this essay proposes that the rise and fall of slavery can be better understood by examining the changing material composition of capital as well as its equally changing cluster of global circuits. Based on critical value theory, it argues that industrialization consistently reshaped spatial and material relations between town and country, capital and labor, and production and consumption, engendering world geographies of accumulation that both fueled and challenged the reproduction of slave labor in the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keen's "new economics" does not address these prominent novel phenomena. I turn finally to Keen's claim that a paradigm shift in economics is possible. Steve Keen has written an important book that should spark the interest of economists and others interested in pressing economic problems. [Extracted from the article]

Grieve Chelwa, Darrick Hamilton, and Avi Green explain how existing accounts of capitalism systematically neglect racial identity group stratification. Their approach points to an important comparative dimension and two significant research agendas that could supplement their arguments. First would be to inquire into the role that equal respect plays in pushing back against stratification. Second would be to investigate how other aspects of social norms may have consequences too, perhaps drawing insights from a new body of research on racial stratification that draws upon Marxian and neoclassical economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological change is one of the most important forces shaping modern society. Which perspectives can help us understand technological change, especially from a political economy lens? The first part of this article provides a basic overview of debates that shaped this scientific field, starting with nineteenth century British political economy. Liberal political economists as well as their critics of the time both saw the machinery question as a paramount challenge to British society, especially with regard to the problem of technological unemployment. The second part of the article turns to neoclassical economics and the conceptual tools that it uses to understand technology. Critiques of the neoclassical approach are also included, of which Schumpeter’s critique is the most important. The third part of the article turns to the contemporary literature on “skill-biased technological change” which rewards those that have the skills that complement digital technology and punishes those that do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the evolution of entrepreneurship in the context of China's economic and social development, emphasizing the importance of benefit corporation entrepreneurship in the new era. The topics include the role of entrepreneurship in China's economic transformation, the evolution of entrepreneurship through different stages, and the policy importance of cultivating benefit corporation entrepreneurship for high-quality economic and social development.

This article argues for the construction of a new political economy based on Chinese practices. It begins with an explanation of the research approach of starting from practice, and from a distinctive mode of thinking that is akin to that of medicine, rather than Newtonian physics and mathematical logic. Then it discusses the present-day Chinese practices of combining socialism with market economy, state enterprises with private enterprises, the peasant economy with an industrial economy, and the party-state with the economy—all distinctive realities about the new Chinese political-economic system. The foil for the discussion is the long-standing hegemonic ideology and worldview of Anglo-American classical and neoclassical liberal economics and law. This article suggests that we employ China's traditional dyadic integration worldview, evident in today's practices, to arrive at a new integrative cosmological view that rises above both. To a considerable extent, this article is also a reinterpretation of classical Marxist political economy. What the article advocates may be termed a "participatory socialist market economy," to be distinguished from a bureaucratized and controlling socialist planned economy. This is a system that is still very much in the process of formation, its particular content and characteristics yet to be clarified and specified through a sustained period of searching through practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoclassical economics relies on highly formalized deductive logic to create an overly simplified picture of economic practices. Its universalized model of modernization assumes that the relationship between state and market is antagonistic. This presumption reduces China's "economic miracle" to a simple transformation into a market economy and underestimates the role played by the government, making it impossible to construct a theory that considers China's subjectivity. Studies on China's economy should focus on its practices, which may appear to be paradoxical if seen only from the perspective of Western neoclassical economics, in order to construct an accurate depiction of the foundations of China's development experience. Only through such an endeavor will it be possible to incorporate into any new theory of economic modernization the distinctive features of China's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the work of Professor Svetozar (Steve) Pejovich, focusing on his research on property rights, capitalism, socialism, and freedom. Pejovich argued that property rights are essential for organizing production and distribution, and he compared the differences between capitalist and socialist systems. The text emphasizes the importance of private property and the ability to exchange ownership rights. It also examines the impact of property rights on labor-managed firms in Communist Yugoslavia, highlighting the hindrance of economic calculation and pricing due to the inability to exchange ownership claims. The article concludes by discussing the emergence of "liberal socialism" and arguing that socialism, in any form, is incompatible with liberalism and democracy. [Extracted from the article]

[2] For example, the exchange-value in a stock market is not at all the same as the use-value of a physical stock of resources or even a stock of cattle, where some measure of equality is expected by individuals in sharing a useful resource. Rather than add value, exchange-value actually subtracts value from the environment and from people. Instead of valuing what we add to the commons through our use, civilization values what we take from the commons through the exchange value that we place on the resource extraction and production of goods and services. This new way of accounting was institutionalized as exchange-value, while practical use-value was relegated to secondary status in society.[2] Exchange-value measures the marginal returns on capital rather than the sustainable yield of natural resources. [Extracted from the article]

Most economists are aware that homo economicus is not a 'conception of man,' but only a useful assumption. Still, homo economicus is usually interpreted as an assumption about individual agents. It is individuals who are assumed to be perfectly informed and rational. Homo economicus, however, should not be understood as an assumption about individuals as such. The assumption is only applicable where human action takes place under certain institutional preconditions. It can be applied usefully when we are dealing with legally separate individuals who interact in a monetized market economy where the production process is guided by capital-based enterprises. In short, the institutions characterizing capitalism are also those that allow for the application of the homo economicus assumption. It is necessary to make these institutional preconditions explicit because they are not natural constants and, depending on their design, some of them have ambiguous effects on the market process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of one of the great intellectual revolutions of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the replacement of Marxist economics by neoclassical economics in China. The analysis summarizes what is distinctive about Marxist and neoclassical ways of thinking. The paper then demonstrates how these differences led to different framings and different conclusions about a number of key topics related to the development of capitalism in China. Among the topics explored are the merits of state-owned enterprises, the nature of inequality in China, and the relationship between capitalism and the environment. The paper concludes with a discussion of the different policy agendas that emerge from the different framings offered by neoclassical and Marxist economics. JEL Classification: B41, B51, P2, O53 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The institution of private property forms the basis for ecological disaster. The profit-seeking of the vested interests, in conjunction with their modes of valuing nature through the apparatuses of neoclassical economics and neoliberalism proceed to degrade and destroy life on Earth. I assert that the radical, or original institutional economics (OIE) of Thorstein Veblen, further advanced by William Dugger, have crucial insights to offer the interdisciplinary fields of political ecology and ecological economics which seek to address the underlying causes and emergent complications of the unfolding, interconnected, social, and ecological crises that define our age. This inquiry will attempt to address what appears to be either overlooked or under-explored in these research communities. Namely, that the usurpation of society's surplus production, or, the accumulation of capital, is a parasite that sustains itself not only through the exploitation of human labor, but by exploiting society and nature more broadly, resulting in the deterioration of life itself. I shall argue that the transformation of the obvious predator that pursues power through pecuniary gain into a parasite, undetected by its host, is realized in its most rapacious form in the global hegemonic system of neoliberal capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that late nineteenth-century American fiction, as exemplified by William Dean Howells's The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) and Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900), is entangled in the period's embrace of a new understanding of economic conditions, one premised on the significance of consumer data as the raw material of economic interpretation and fixated on mathematical analysis as a source of knowledge about value. Marginalism in economic theory and realism in American literary practice were contemporaneous efforts to mediate value at a moment of decisive transition in America, as a model of commodity-centered competitive capitalism yielded to the regime of corporate finance. The young academic economists of the period and their literary counterparts explained the economic landscape in much the same way and to many of the same ends. Both began with the daunting question of how to reimagine value in a world characterized by fictitious goods and increasingly abstract financial instruments, a world in which the labor theory of value seemed hopelessly outdated. Both responded to this challenge by proposing novel intellectual procedures for making values appear stable again by focusing on the subjective experiences of consumers. Finally, both marginalists and realists sought to provide a quasi-scientific bedrock for fixing values in consumer society not only by appealing nostalgically to an economy of actual goods and honest work but more importantly by accommodating readers, policy makers, and stakeholders of all kinds to the new realities of finance capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[10] At the very least, market competition requires some degree of formal liberty to enter the market to offer goods and services, which means that an established supplier offering a good may be driven out by a new supplier offering the good on more favorable terms. If, however, suppliers are repeatedly outcompeted, they will eventually be driven out of the market, and this threat of elimination is aggravated by the fact that market competition essentially allows for an unlimited number of competitors. Being driven out of competition may pose an existential material threat.[15] This existential dependence on competitive outcomes is the most significant distinguishing feature between market competition and other forms of human competition.[16] In political competition, for example, citizens can easily refrain from politics if they wish.[17] Finally, in market competition we also put our social existence at stake. Heath thinks that in market competition, too, the ideal of being something like a good sport can be invoked in order to prevent the exploitation of market failures, even while market competition exempts actors from certain everyday moral norms (Heath, [28], pp. 104-113). Hence, the result is that both the morality internal to the market and morality surrounding the market are likely to only feebly counteract the downward sloping tendency of market competition. [Extracted from the article]

Erica Schoenberger has done yeoman work over the years digging into European history to reflect on the origins of markets and money. Her Roepke lecture builds on this earlier work to the question of the origins of towns and burghers in the Middle Ages, roughly 800–1400. Schoenberger's work has not received the attention it should have among economic geographers, for three reasons. One is that most economics is based on modeling, not history. Another is that translating the lessons of history to today is difficult. A third is that economics and economic geography are rooted in a view of the world that naturalizes markets and money (Schoenberger and Walker 2017). Schoenberger's story of markets and money grows out of the work of Karl Polanyi and others who have debunked the view that markets are the normal form of economic interaction in premodern societies, when they are the exception. Market exchange does not grow up organically from simple barter, as posited by Adam Smith. Nor do modern markets scale up from village squares, as in the just-so story of Leon Walras, one of the fathers of neoclassical economics. Extensive markets and commercial societies are modern inventions (Schoenberger 2008, 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoclassical economics has been built on the assumption of the limitless human needs and the limited natural resources. The essay aims at challenging this thesis by presenting how scarcity is the result of the surplus production. It introduces the notions of initial advantage, cumulative advantage and class surplus. It highlights that the way of producing surplus has undergone a basic change when capitalism has become the ruling mode of production: the production of surplus has become subordinated to the objective laws of the market competition instead of the subjective needs of the holders of advantage. This has allowed an enormous increase of the production of surplus expropriated by the propertied class, which is other than the working class. As a result, nowadays enough class surplus is produced to eliminate scarcity overall. The necessity of this elimination is emphasised by the fact that accumulation of advantages based on surplus production that coincides with the production of scarcity and accumulation of disadvantages perpetually rushes to crisis and has devastating impacts both on the society and the nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the dark side of capitalism as an economic system, as identified and highlighted in orthodox, laissez-faire, including classical and neoclassical, economics. While orthodox economics is widely regarded as apologetic with respect to capitalism, still it to some extent recognizes or implies the latter's dark side and therefore its duality and complexity in terms of its economic and other outcomes. The paper identifies and considers certain salient manifestations of this face of capitalism such as those in the market, in economic welfare, in economic structure and the distribution of wealth, and others. The overall finding is that even orthodox economics does not consider capitalism to be an absolute good and an immutable, eternal, and perfect economic system, and instead acknowledges and emphasizes its relative character in societal and historical terms and its various adverse dimensions and imperfections. The paper contributes to a better understanding of classical and neoclassical economics' treatment of capitalism in relation to its conception within classical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Coase theorem" states that in a zero-transaction cost neoclassical world society's wealth is not affected by the allocation of liabilities rules. The "theorem" rests upon two fundamental premises: the first concerns Coase's view of mutual causation of harm, namely the reciprocity principle, and the second refers to his understanding of private property as a bundle of use rights. However, when these two premises are specifically applied in cases of trespass to land, not only portray a blur picture of private property, but they also contradict the very nature of rights over property. Specifically, I am arguing that these two premises undermine the centrality of exclusion rights to the institution of land property, hence violate the de jure basis of these rights, as well their private nature. This is turn implies that Coasean world is a world where the prevalent idea of mutual causation of harm creates idiosyncratic and partial rather than standardized de jure private property rights in land. As such, this Coasean version of the world fundamentally breaks from the neoclassical view of the capitalist world, where the security and exercise of private property rights in land is a sine qua non condition for the working of the economic system. • "Coase theorem" states that in a zero-transaction cost neoclassical wealth is not affected by the allocation of liabilities rules. • Reciprocity principle portrays a blur picture of private property in land. • Reciprocity principle contradicts the very nature of rights over land property. • Coasean version of the world fundamentally breaks from the neoclassical view of the capitalist world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an analysis of the notion of liberal-Marshallian citizenship in the light of the impact that neoliberalization processes have. We describe an approach to the hypothesis that neoliberalism does not allow the realization of the notion of Liberal-Marshallian citizenship due to the dispossession of social rights, indebtedness and growing precariousness of work, and wealth concentration. For that, it addresses two levels of analysis: a conceptual one, about the notion of citizenship, focused on the liberal idea; and, a second, which identifies the determinations of contemporary dependent capitalism and the limits of the kind of citizenship that can be built within those parameters in a neoliberal context. Methodologically, the article tries to develop a heuristic interpretation of the work of several authors, as primary and secondary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper challenges the mainstream stance in the study of applied ethics in international development. Applied ethics is positioned at the macro-social level of global ethics while a specific codification is attempted by formulating international development based on its structural synthesis, in a threefold level: First, the structural synthesis -associated with the framework of existing international development policy-can be found in the 'market relations'. Second, the analysis specifies the policies applied at the national level and the role of nation-state policy. Third, the paper criticizes the international development institutions' policies. In each of the levels mentioned above, the analysis reveals the fundamental policy theory issues of neoclassical economics, as the intellectual defender of free market economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For this essay, to honor Professor Kolodko, I take up the case of an older pragmatist whose circumstances and achievements I knew well – that of my father, John Kenneth Galbraith. While I cannot do full justice in this space to the life and work of 97 years, what I hope to show is how the application of my father's background and experience in a world of mundane knowledge and urgent problems led to his development of a compelling critique of classical and neoclassical economics, and to his presentation of a world-view that stood, for a time, as the leading vision of industrial capitalism in the modern age. That this vision was swept aside, and largely dismissed or ignored, by the professional academic economists is, under the circumstances, merely a continuing testimony to its merit, and to the threat it poses to a comfortable, but wholly impractical, world-view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the factor of emotional intelligence (EI) into the calculus of neoclassical analysis under precautionary saving aiming at stabilizing consumption in the case of an exogenous output shock.Design/methodology/approach The introduction of EI differentiates individual firms in handling production uncertainty and individual consumers in coping with consumption uncertainty, but the source of uncertainty is exogenous and affects all the same; there are no idiosyncratic risks and uncertainties. This in conjunction with the median-voter-theory like approach to agent heterogeneity prompted by EI, replicates the result that aggregates quantitative predictions are almost indistinguishable from their representative agent counterpart in life cycle models of precautionary saving.Findings EI corroborates stabilization greatly but only the introduction of a monetary authority would fully stabilize the system by injecting or withdrawing money depending on the state of the economy. Money becomes centrally issued and it would be destabilizing if it was accompanied by central and/or commercial bank seigniorage. Median EI is found to coincide with homo economicus' rationality. These results point to the importance of preserving the institutional character of capitalism as a free enterprise but also a competitive system under a government in the service of the private sector.Originality/value Methodologically, this paper acknowledges the mutual interdependence between human action and social structure in the liberal setting in which free enterprise is a socioeconomic process that identifies value through exchange under the sociopolitical process of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By integrating selected Kaleckian and Marxian insights, this paper analyzes the sources of profit realization and the profit rate in the US economy from 1964–2013. The most significant sources of profit realization in the United States are capitalists' consumption and workers' debt, which historically have been under appreciated both theoretically and empirically. The insights gleaned by analyzing the sources of profit realization aid in understanding the Great Recession and the future of the US economy.JEL Classifications: B51, E11 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since he won the Nobel Prize and joined the World Bank as Chief Economist, most of us see Stiglitz as a policy-oriented economist clearly aligned with the political left. To those with preconceived ideas about Stiglitz's world-view, it may come as a surprise that Stiglitz argues strongly in favour of competition - very much in line with what we teach in first-year economics classes. I feel that in large parts, and as sometimes quite explicitly stated by Stiglitz, Australia is an example of the policies Stiglitz advocates. [Extracted from the article]

This paper conceives of the market as an institution, and contrasts two theoretical approaches: Institutionalism, with an evolutionary and analytical bias, whose theoretical basis comes from "Old/Original" Institutionalism, and New Institutional Economics, with an analytical, contractual approach, linked to mainstream economics. Both approaches have given relevant contributions, as they consider the importance of institutions for economic performance. The limits of New Institutional Economics are particularly relevant, whose analysis of the operation of markets is centered on the logic of transaction cost economics as a determinant of economic performance. Evolutionary Institutionalism, in turn, sees the market within a broader scope, in which cost economies only partially explains economic performance, but it is not necessarily seen as a determining factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of political concepts of neoliberal capitalism. Topics mentioned include the reconceptualization of the neoliberalism phenomenon and antineoliberal politics, the use of social scientific theory of neoclassical economics, and the emergence of political subjectivity.

The introduction of the concept of capital in Capital - with the words ‘we find’ - has provoked a great deal of discussion about the precise relation between the categories of simple circulation and the concept of capital. In this article, I argue that Marx derives the concept of capital by way of an analysis of the immanent contradictions of money, and that this dialectical derivation can be understood as a conceptual movement in which the concepts of money and capital progressively change their modal status. Furthermore, I examine the development of this transition to capital throughout Marx’s writings from the period 1857 to 1872, arguing that the same arguments can be found in all the relevant writings. Finally, the article provides a critical review of the literature on the transition to capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the controversy between Böhm-Bawerk and Edgeworth. The crux of this debate revolving around value and cost lay in their views on labour exchange. Böhm-Bawerk and Edgeworth did not disagree on the basic principles underlying the causality between labour exchange and value-cost. Böhm-Bawerk stressed a decisive influence of social power relationships on labour time and Edgeworth apparently agreed. Böhm-Bawerk’s and Edgeworth’s observations on actual industrial relations and their theoretical arguments informing the controversy had variances. Such observation-theory discrepancies also appeared in their other work and were shared by other early neoclassical economists. Their efforts, with this contradiction, contributed to the moulding of a principle that de-individuates labour exchange. At the root of this process lay the fact that, despite their subjectivist approach, they failed to comprehend the distinctiveness of capitalistic labour exchange arising from worker subjectivity towards labour performance and employer countermeasures. The Böhm-Bawerk-Edgeworth controversy typically illustrates this crucial moment for the establishment of the neoclassical paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market economy can be defended using the lens of virtue ethics. Modern virtue ethics was developed originally by the English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe. Virtue ethics rejects consequentialism and focuses on the virtues. And human nature appears to be collaborative in both language and economic relations exemplified by exchange. By adapting the concept of 'characteristic virtues', developed by Alasdair MacIntyre, it follows that collaboration has its own particular virtues. These virtues can produce prescriptions which mitigate the costs of economic transactions and collaboration. The development of behavioural economics has shown human beings sometimes fall short of the rationality described by neo-classical microeconomics. But virtuous action tends to correct these deficiencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive critical literature on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is surveyed under nine headings. The first deals with the conservative argument that inequality in the distribution of wealth does not matter, since a rising tide lifts all boats. Second, it is claimed that Piketty’s prediction of continuously increasing inequality and the return of ‘patrimonial capitalism’ is unjustified. Third, the quality of the empirical evidence that he cites is questioned, on a number of quite different grounds. Fourth, some critics object that Piketty’s explanation of long-run trends in the distribution of wealth is too general and too theoretical. Fifth is the argument that he has used the correct (neoclassical) theory incorrectly, exaggerating the elasticity of substitution of capital for labour. Against this, post-Keynesian critics claim, sixthly, that Piketty is using the wrong theory, and should have drawn on the Kaldor–Pasinetti model of distribution and growth, and not the discredited neoclassical analysis. Seventh, Piketty has been criticised for ignoring the distribution of wealth in developing countries. Eighth, there is a wide range of objections to his most striking policy proposal, for a progressive global wealth tax. Finally, several critics from outside economics complain that Piketty has neglected a number of non-economic dimensions of inequality. I conclude by welcoming both the book and the critical literature, and calling for the distribution of wealth to be placed back on the political agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]