Piketty's work focuses on public economics , in particular income and wealth inequality. He is the author of the best-selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century , [ 2 ] which emphasises the themes of his work on wealth concentrations and distribution over the past years. The book argues that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future.
Piketty proposes improving the education systems and considers diffusion of knowledge, diffusion of skills, diffusion of idea of productivity as the main mechanism that will lead to lower inequality.
Piketty was born in the Parisian suburb of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine. His parents had been involved with a Trotskyist group and the May protests in Paris but they had moved away from this political position before Piketty was born. A visit to the Soviet Union in was enough to make him a firm "believe[r] in capitalism, private property and the market". After earning his PhD, Piketty taught from to as an assistant professor in the department of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In , Piketty became the first head of the PSE, which he helped organize. Piketty was unimpressed by Hollande's tenure, later describing him as "hopeless". In January , he rejected the French Legion of Honour order , stating that he refused the nomination because he did not think it was the government's role to decide who is honourable. On 2 October , Piketty received an honorary doctorate from the University of Johannesburg and on 3 October he delivered the 13th Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture at the University of Johannesburg.
In , Piketty was also elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society. His economic research focusses mainly on wealth inequalities and the use of capital in the 21st century.
