About Wealth, savings and inequality in eight centuries of capitalism

This paper constructs annual data for the aggregate wealth-income ratio, W-Y, savings and growth for Britain 1210-2013. The data are used to test one of Piketty's central hypotheses that the W-Y ratio is governed by the s-g ratio in the long run and it is argued that Piketty's model needs to be extended by the share of non-renewable in total wealth in order to explain the W-Y ratio during different eras of capitalism – pre-industrialization, industrialization and the knowledge driven economy. It is shown that savings, growth and share of non-renewables have been the fundamental drivers of the W-Y ratio over the past eight centuries.

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