WS MoreOrLess: The Piketty Affair
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2014
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Did 'rock-star' French economist Thomas Piketty get his numbers wrong? His theories about rising inequality and the increasing importance of capital have been the talk of the economic and political worlds this year. And part of their power has been the massive amount of data Piketty has brought together to back them. But the Financial Times claims to have found significant problems with Piketty's data on wealth. Tim Harford examines the FT's claims and Thomas Piketty's response. This programme was first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:42.0 | Thank you for downloading from the BBC. |
| 0:45.0 | For details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use, go to BBCworldservice.com |
| 0:51.0 | slash podcasts. Service. hot date with data. I'm Tim Harford. This week the world of economics has been |
| 1:06.5 | a buzz with claims that one of their own has got his numbers wrong and it's no |
| 1:11.7 | ordinary economist. |
| 1:14.0 | He's the Rock Star French economist who's book capital in the 21st century. |
| 1:19.0 | Reviewers have called it a bulldozer of a book, |
| 1:22.0 | Agisterial, |
| 1:23.4 | seminal, definitive, a watershed. |
| 1:26.0 | The Rockstar of economists |
| 1:28.0 | by the New York. |
| 1:29.8 | The man who's managed to unite the words |
| 1:32.0 | Rockstar and economist in the same sentence is Thomas |
| 1:35.1 | Picetti. |
| 1:36.1 | He's a French professor whose vast tome, capital in the 21st century, has combined lots of data with a grand theory about the economy and yet somehow |
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