More Piketty discussions

Steve Roth at Angry Bear :
"Where are the lines between “real” capital, “human” capital, and “financial” capital? What are their economic relationships? (If you’re under the impression that they’re obvious or clearly understood and agreed-upon, you’re not thinking very hard. At all.)

My purpose here is not to solve that capital conundrum — far be it from me. I come not to bury Piketty, but to praise him. His usages and definitions provide a very useful framework in which to discuss issues that have been hard to discuss coherently absent such framing. The evidence he’s assembled within that framework, and his remarkably cogent discussion of that evidence, gives ample evidence of that.

But even more: By tackling these definitional issues head-on (if not always successfully), he has brought an inconclusively theorized crux of economic thinking — the nature of capital (plus wealth, value, and even money) — back to the forefront of discussion. We can all hope that much good will come from that."

And Kevin Quinn at Econospeak.