Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty is Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and Professor at the École d’économie de Paris/Paris School of Economics. He has published numerous research articles in international journals such as Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Explorations in Economic History, Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, as well as about ten books.

He is the author of historical and theoretical works devoted to the relationship between economic development and wealth distribution. In particular, he is the initiator of the recent literature on the long-term evolution of the share of high incomes in national income (now available in the World Wealth and Income Database). This work has led to a radical questioning of Kuznets’ optimistic hypothesis on the link between development and inequality, and to highlighting the importance of political, social and fiscal institutions in the historical dynamics of wealth distribution. He is also the author of the international bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century.