G uido A lfani and M atteo D i T ullio . The Lion’s Share

Following the success of Thomas Piketty’s 2013 study Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the growth of inequality has been the subject of further historical interest. One recent example can be found in The Lion’s Share: Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe, which is part of a series of related projects seeking to measure economic inequality in preindustrial Europe from a comparative perspective. Using tax data from a selection of territories of the Venetian mainland state, Guido Alfani and Matteo Di Tullio demonstrate the steady growth of inequality across the early modern period. In 1500, the richest 10 percent of this society owned 57.1 percent of the wealth; by 1750, their share had grown to 76.1 percent of the wealth (128). The authors take a distinctive approach, arguing that the process was driven primarily by fiscal policy, rather than being an inevitable consequence of economic...

Capital (architecture) · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Inequality · State (computer science) · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies