Marty Feldstein denounces Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century in The Wall Street Journal: “His [Piketty’s] thesis rests on … a flawed interpretation of U.S. income tax data …. The … problem with Mr. Piketty’s conclusions about increasing inequality is his use of income tax returns without recognizing the importance of the changes that have occurred in tax rules. … Changes in taxpayer behavior [in reaction to changes in the tax laws since 1980] substantially increased the amount of income included on the returns of high-income individuals … [which] creates the false impression of a sharp rise in the income of high-income taxpayers even though there was only a change in the legal form of that income.” Emphasis mine.
Feldstein joins a growing list of serious economists on both the left and right denouncing Piketty.