Letter from the President – Second Issue

Blog, News, Newsletter

Welcome to the second issue of our CREDO newsletter.  A great deal has happened since our last issue.

In the spring, Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century became a New York Times bestseller, creating excitement, controversy and much discussion in the economics community but probably more so in the Church, media, and broader society.  The focus of the book is, of course, wealth and income inequality, and we have decided to give some focus to the issue in the current issue.  CREDO vice-president Jesus Fernandez Villaverde has contributed a thoughtful review of the book…

Fairness in the 21st Century

Blog, Newsletter

After the score of reviews already written about Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century over the last few months, it is futile to rehearse the same arguments about the economics of the book yet one more time. Suffice it to refer the reader to the reviews of Debraj Ray, Larry Summers, or Per Krusell and Tony Smith. However, the readers of this newsletter may find of some interest to reflect not on the book itself, but on the reasons of its success and why those reasons point out to the challenges that Catholic economists need to address to help building a fair society in the twenty-first century. …

Inequality in Developing Countries: What Do We Know?

Blog, Newsletter

In an April 28 2014 tweet, the Pope declared inequality to be “the root of social evil”.  Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century attracted considerable attention, particularly on this side of the Atlantic.  By presenting a number of facts on inequality over the past 200 years, it forcefully documents the almost-uninterrupted increase in the concentration of wealth that took place within the wealthiest nations.  An intense and often passionate debate ensued on what these facts meant for economic development in general and what policies were warranted.  While the countries included in Piketty’s analysis are exclusively the wealthiest ones, one wonders about the extent to which these observations and the broader lessons derived from them are applicable to the developing world (Milanovic 2014).