Economist Thomas Piketty to Deliver Storrs Lecture on March 9

Thomas Piketty, professor of economics at EHESS (L’ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) and the Paris School of Economics, will give the 2014–2015 Storrs Lecture on “Capital in the 21st Century.” The talk will be on March 9 at 4:30 pm in the Levinson Auditorium at Yale Law School.

The lecture, “Capital in the 21st Century,” which is also the title of Piketty’s 2014 book, will be on the dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital. In his book and talk, Piketty analyzes data from 20 countries to uncover key economic and social patterns. He will show that, although modern economic growth has avoided the inequalities predicted by Karl Marx, we have not modified the structures of capital as much as anticipated after World War II.

Thomas Piketty is the author of numerous articles published in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, and the Review of Economic Studies, and a dozen books. He has done major historical and theoretical work on the interplay between economic development and the distribution of income and wealth. In particular, he is the initiator of the recent literature on the long run evolution of top income shares in national income. Piketty received his M.Sc. in mathematics from Ecole normale supérieure in 1990 and his PhD in Economics from EHESS and LSE in 1993.

The Storrs Lectures, one of Yale Law School's oldest and most prestigious lecture programs, were founded in 1889. The fund was established through the gift of the Misses Eliza T. and Mary A. Robinson in memory of their great-uncle, the Honorable William L. Storrs, B.A. 1814, at one time Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut and professor at Yale Law School. These annual lectures are given by a prominent scholar within the broad topic of fundamental problems with law and jurisprudence.