Pareto and Piketty: The Macroeconomics of Top Income and Wealth Inequality

an article by Charles I. Jones (Stanford University, California, and National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts) published in Journal of Economic Perspectives Volume 29 Number 1 (Winter 2015)

First paragraph

Since the early 2000s, research by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez (and their coauthors, including Anthony Atkinson and Gabriel Zucman) has revolutionized our understanding of income and wealth inequality. The crucial point of departure for this revolution is the extensive data they have used, based largely on administrative tax records.

Piketty’s (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the latest contribution in this line of work, especially with the new data it provides on capital and wealth. Piketty also proposes a framework for describing the underlying forces that affect inequality and wealth, and unlikely as it seems, a bit of algebra that plays an important role in Piketty’s book has even been seen on T-shirts:

Full text (PDF 18pp) not including appendix and data appendix

The same issue also contains an article by Thomas Piketty himself reflecting on his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century and an article The Window Tax: a Case Study in Excess Burden.
I could have sat and read all afternoon.
Wishing that I could afford the time to do so.

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