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SUMMARY:The Piketty opportunity: inequality\, global comparisons and a new
  agenda for economic history - Professor Pat Hudson and Dr Keith Tribe
DTSTART:20161110T170000Z
DTEND:20161110T183000Z
UID:TALK67257@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Duncan Needham
DESCRIPTION:This seminar will focus upon a recently published collection o
 f essays\, The Contradictions of Capital in the Twenty-first Century: the 
 Piketty Opportunity  (Newcastle\, Agenda Publishing 2016). First the edito
 rs will briefly explain the purpose and the structure of the volume. They 
 will make clear that\, in its attention to key definitions and concepts\, 
 relating to inequality\, and in its focus upon regional specificities on a
  global scale\, the volume attempts to promote Piketty’s work as a sprin
 gboard for developing new ideas and approaches in economic history and for
  re-introducing politics and political power into the heart of economics. 
  \nPat Hudson will outline some of long-standing debates\, concepts\, meas
 ures and methods\, in economics and economic history that Piketty’s work
  exposes for examination. Comparative measures of ‘development’\, grow
 th theory\, definitions and measures of capital and wealth\, technological
  innovation\, ideas about convergence and divergence\, the central importa
 nce of politics and ideology in economic change – these can all be place
 d in the spotlight created by Piketty\, with salutary implications. \nIn h
 is insistence on the importance of understanding the dynamics and the impl
 ications of accumulation and inequality\, Piketty offers a new angle on de
 velopment. In his preference for induction\, for new data gathering\, for 
 descriptive rather than analytical statistics\, and in his questioning of 
 the utility of multiple regression analysis especially in relation to comp
 lex cross national data\, he opens up ground for a critique of approaches 
 and methods that have dominated the fields of economics and economic histo
 ry for decades. Piketty and his colleagues also fundamentally unsettle the
  assumption that the night watchman state and liberalised markets are good
  for growth. \nPiketty’s data and his thesis (with their absences as wel
 l as their presences) demand that many lines of conventional research be g
 iven renewed attention\, in particular the impact of inequality upon the d
 istribution of financial assets and investment patterns\, on aggregate and
  differentiated patters of demand (hence of innovation and economies of sc
 ale)\, on human capital (through unequal access to education and training 
 as well as nutrition and health)\, and on the nature of the state and poli
 tical instability.\nKeith Tribe will next seek to open out issues of compa
 rative method in the study of economic history\, whilst also emphasising t
 he major argument of the volume: that Piketty has created an opportunity t
 o bring economic\, political and historical analysis closer together.  Dra
 wing upon the chapters that address the specificities of the economies tre
 ated by Piketty as “the developed world” (France\, Germany\, Sweden\, 
 UK\, USA)\, he will first point out differences in institutional structure
  and chronology raised by the authors\, suggesting that these undermine th
 e usual practice of making comparisons in which either an abstract model\,
  or one particular national developmental model\, is used both to elucidat
 e basic trends and also to register “deviations” from this trend.  He 
 will argue that this is as much a problem for long-run economic historical
  work on one particular territory/state as it is for cross-country compari
 sons in a restricted timeframe.  The big question is how best to make sens
 e of social and economic development without falling back upon conceptual 
 frameworks that suppress difference and impose artificial uniformity.  Thi
 s is both a very old story – the origins of capitalism\, the emergence o
 f individualism\, the story of industrialisation etc. - but also an argume
 nt that seems to need constant re-emphasis\, given the persistence of pres
 entist historiographies of the past.\nTo move on from the opportunity that
  Piketty has created it will be necessary further to question the goals of
  growth and development: how to promote better social outcomes from econom
 ic growth\, how to reconcile growth with equity and sustainability.  The w
 ays in which the success or failure of national economies (and of the inte
 rnational economy) might be measured will also need more sophisticated yar
 dsticks than are currently applied\, yardsticks that place distributional 
 issues back at centre stage. The role of new technologies in determining g
 rowth rates and income distribution\, in developing as well as in leading 
 nations\, will need more attention than Piketty gives it. Above all\, we m
 ust take Piketty’s lead in finding better ways to link economic analysis
  nationally and internationally to politics and to the exercise of economi
 c and political power.  Economics in the twenty-first century\, both natio
 nally and globally\, must be related to the trajectory of democracy and it
 s abuses.\n
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre\, Trinity Hall
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