by Bob Hancké, LSE

The debate is slowly getting on: the FT’s original criticism of Piketty’s data is here. Piketty himself replied to AFP here.

So far there is a little detail on the accusations beside a few transcription errors and a formula wrong here and there (not insignificant, but not that surprising either, given the amount of data), a lot of indignant grand-standing by right-wing economists (how dare he suggest that capitalism produces inequality?) and little in the way of defence by Piketty beyond ‘get real’ and an initial, general statement on the FT blogs page, which can be found here.