Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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This book is based on fifteen years of research (1998–2013) devoted essentially to understanding the historical dynamics of wealth and income. Much of this research was done in collaboration with other scholars.

My earlier work on high-income earners in France, Les hauts revenus en France au 20e siècle (2001), had the extremely good fortune to win the enthusiastic support of Anthony Atkinson and Emmanuel Saez. Without them, my modest Francocentric project would surely never have achieved the international scope it has today. Tony, who was a model for me during my graduate school days, was the first reader of my historical work on inequality in France and immediately took up the British case as well as a number of other countries. Together, we edited two thick volumes that came out in 2007 and 2010, covering twenty countries in all and constituting the most extensive database available in regard to the historical evolution of income inequality. Emmanuel and I dealt with the US case. We discovered the vertiginous growth of income of the top 1 percent since the 1970s and 1980s, and our work enjoyed a certain influence in US political debate. We also worked together on a number of theoretical papers dealing with the optimal taxation of capital and income. This book owes a great deal to these collaborative efforts.

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