In my last post, I discussed how the nature of innovation in our time raises questions for Thomas Piketty’s forecast of increasing inequality in his new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In this post, I argue that his policy proposals also leave out consideration of innovation and thus risk great social harm.
Piketty does not recognize how crucial extraordinary individuals are to innovation and distribution. As Robert Solow notes in his review. Piketty seems skeptical that today’s highly paid “supermanagers” add much value for their very high salaries. Solow endorses this skepticism, agreeing that agency costs are responsible for these high salaries. On this theory, boards of public companies are cozy with these managers who often appoint them to their positions and the result is sky high compensation. But if agency costs were the cause, we should observe closely held companies paying supermanagers less, but as Greg Mankiw points out, they do not.
A much better explanation is that innovations in the structure of corporations– faster telecommunications and the availability of data that represent the details of companies’ operations—have enabled managers at the very top to make a huge difference throughout their organization. A business today is the shadow of one or a few individuals who can take the key decisions.
During the run-up to Easter this year, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron had the temerity to assert publicly (and on 
By bold paramilitary action, Vladimir Putin is seizing full power over eastern Ukraine. At the same time his empty threat of outright invasion is leading the Ukrainian government—supported by Barack Obama as a rope supports a hanging man—to agree to a “federative structure” for the country. 