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http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/23/financial_times_on_piketty_his_data_is_wrong.html
***SNIP
Invoking Reinhart and Rogoff—whose famous work on the effects of national debt on GDP growth was undermined, in part, by the world's most famous Excel spreadsheet error—is a bit bold here. Already, conservative thinker and Slate contributor Reihan Salam says the paper may be "overstating its case." The FT’s main complaint seems to be that Piketty's work is based on a patchwork of historical data sources—all of which he has made available online—and in order to smooth the numbers over time, he’s made adjustments they find dubious or inexplicable. In some cases there may even be straightforward transcription errors. Most seriously, they claim, "Some numbers appear simply to be constructed out of thin air."
But as Matt Yglesias notes, their disagreements about some countries seem fairly minor. Here, for instance, is the data on France, with Piketty’s trend line in blue and the FT’s corrected version in red. In the end, they basically overlap. (You can find this graph, and the FT’s more detailed explanation of its conclusions, here).
However, the paper does level two somewhat serious accusations. First, it says Piketty has covered up a giant gap in America's historical records on wealth concentration. "There is simply no data between 1870 and 1960," the newspaper states. "Yet, Prof. Piketty chooses to derive a trend." This charge is neutered a bit by the fact that Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez recently released a detailed analysis of U.S. wealth inequality dating back to 1913 that shows an even more dramatic increase than what Piketty found. But Piketty will nonetheless need to spell out how he reached his own conclusions in a bit more detail.
The much more important point of contention is Great Britain. The FT argues that Piketty’s graphs simply “do not match” his underlying data on the UK, and that official estimates show no significant increase in the country’s concentration of wealth since the 1970s.
***SNIP
Invoking Reinhart and Rogoff—whose famous work on the effects of national debt on GDP growth was undermined, in part, by the world's most famous Excel spreadsheet error—is a bit bold here. Already, conservative thinker and Slate contributor Reihan Salam says the paper may be "overstating its case." The FT’s main complaint seems to be that Piketty's work is based on a patchwork of historical data sources—all of which he has made available online—and in order to smooth the numbers over time, he’s made adjustments they find dubious or inexplicable. In some cases there may even be straightforward transcription errors. Most seriously, they claim, "Some numbers appear simply to be constructed out of thin air."
But as Matt Yglesias notes, their disagreements about some countries seem fairly minor. Here, for instance, is the data on France, with Piketty’s trend line in blue and the FT’s corrected version in red. In the end, they basically overlap. (You can find this graph, and the FT’s more detailed explanation of its conclusions, here).
However, the paper does level two somewhat serious accusations. First, it says Piketty has covered up a giant gap in America's historical records on wealth concentration. "There is simply no data between 1870 and 1960," the newspaper states. "Yet, Prof. Piketty chooses to derive a trend." This charge is neutered a bit by the fact that Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez recently released a detailed analysis of U.S. wealth inequality dating back to 1913 that shows an even more dramatic increase than what Piketty found. But Piketty will nonetheless need to spell out how he reached his own conclusions in a bit more detail.
The much more important point of contention is Great Britain. The FT argues that Piketty’s graphs simply “do not match” his underlying data on the UK, and that official estimates show no significant increase in the country’s concentration of wealth since the 1970s.
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