Piket: I want to start with marks, because i, as you do point out, piket's book is a in some sense, there's certainly a wink, if not a nod, to marks the title of his book is capital in the 20 first century. And mark's book, of course, was called das capital a. He certainly sees himself in that tradition, that grand tradition, not just focusing on capital, but also in deriving general rules. So i thought it be useful for me and for our listeners, to hear what were mark's general rules and what went wrong with them.
Daron Acemoglu, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his new paper co-authored with James Robinson, "The Rise and Fall of General Laws of Capitalism," a critique of Thomas Piketty, Karl Marx, and other thinkers who have tried to explain patterns of data as inevitable "laws" without regard to institutions. Acemoglu and Roberts also discuss labor unions, labor markets, and inequality.