Larry Summers has an excellent review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In many ways, his reaction is similar to Greg Mankiw’s. He agrees completely with the factual record but does not fully endorse Piketty’s proposed explanation for the patters or Piketty’s policy recommendations. Some excerpts that caught my eye …
On Piketty’s argument that the returns to wealth are “largely reinvested”:
The determinants of levels of consumer spending have been much studied by macroeconomists. The general conclusion of the research is that an increase of $1 in wealth leads to an additional $.05 in spending. This is just enough to offset the accumulation of returns that is central to Piketty’s analysis.
On the prevalence of inherited wealth among the ultra-rich :
[…] the data […] indicate, contra Piketty, that the share of the Forbes 400 who inherited their wealth is in sharp decline.
On the role…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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