Piketty’s dataset: part of a trend which is changing economics.
Update: via Business Insider: this 2012 Cato Institute report by Steve Hanke and Nicholas Krus which, starting in France in 1796, carefully lists all 56 known episodes of hyperinflation (21 of which were connected with demise of Soviet Union and Yugoslavia).
I’m reading Thomas Piketty’s book about wealth, capital and inequality. At this moment one remark:
His book is based upon a very extensive ‘open source’ dataset which spans the centuries and the globe (wealth, return on capital, labour share, share of capital etc.). This seems to be part of a trend as Piketty is not the only economist who does this. Other examples are:
Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff with their ‘This time it’s different. Eight centuries of financially folly‘ dataset, which spans the centuries and the globe (debt).
The late Angus Maddison data on GDP (dataset continued by ‘a group of close colleagues’) which span the millenia and the globe
The Bank for International Settlements with their recent dataset on house prices which span decades (for Norway: centuries) and the globe.
The (real) wages datasets of the International Institute of Social History (moderator: Jan Luiten van Zanden) which span the centuries and the globe.
These datasets are changing or did already change the science of economics. A common theme: there is no such thing as a stable monetary capitalist economy.
I do think that, as long as we have the Sveriges Riksbank prize in economics science in memory of Alfred Nobel, the founding and maintenance of such datahubs should be one of the arguments to award the prize.
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Real-World Economics Review Blog 
In a Newtonian model of the economy currently in development, applied to Thomas Piketty’s macro-equilibrated economy, the inverted ratio g/s of Law 2 and the ratio r/α derived from Law 1 respectively represent the “velocity” components of the “momenta” of two different but tightly interconnected “economies” of the 99% and the wealthiest 1%, respectively dubbed “H. libertà” and “H. stato”; with the variables thereof in Eq. (1a) denoted by “[l]” and “[s],” the economic ratio of which is 1/β. The mass “m” of each economy represents what is done (economically, politically, and socially) respectively by the 99% and wealthiest 1%, in maintaining the “velocity” (rate of increase) of their respective economy; one perhaps often achieved at some expense to – or limitation of – the other.
The internal dynamics of these interactions, represented by the economic equations of motion (1) below, establish and maintain over the long-term a slowly evolving “equilibrium,” between the income of the 99% and the capital of the wealthiest 1%. However, without further consideration, these equations don’t account for “external shocks” (technological, environmental, political, etc.) experienced by one or both economies. The names of the variables in these equations are from Machiavelli’s “The Prince”; the economics of which is Manichean so that “good” and “evil” both exist deeply intertwined.
The question perhaps raised by these equations concerning today is: is it now approaching “Midnight” in Wall Street’s socioeconomic “Garden of Good and Evil”? Employed in applications to relevant data, Eq. (1) might provide concrete answers. What then are Eq. (1) to economists? How are economists to understand them? They in essence are equations of the economy’s dynamic “social history,” the dynamism of which then as well could provide some basis for predicting the economy’s future.
(1a) p[l]j =
[Sum(k=1,n) {m[l]n *
Sum(k=1,n) v[l]n}] {j= 1,…, m}
(1b) p[s]j =
[Sum(k=1,n) {m[s]n *
Sum(k=1,n) v[s]n} ] {j= 1,…, m}
(1c) F[s]j = (d/dt) * p[l]j {j= 1,…, m}
(1d) F[L]j = (d/dt) * p[s]j {j= 1,…, m}
(1e) F[s]j = F[L]j {j= 1,…, m}
(1f) F[_]j =
[Sum(k=1,n) {m[s]n *
m[l]n * MIFF}] {j= 1,…, m}
(Cambria Math versions of Eq. (1) are available.)
–velocity v: “H. virtú” (direction and rate of socioeconomic movement)
–mass m: “H. mercennarius” (immanent force sustaining socioeconomic “v”)
–momentum p: “H. principality” (resistance against externally induced change)
–force F: “H. fortuna” (externally impressed forces producing socioeconomic change)
–[l]: “H. libertà” (socioeconomic “principalities” of the 99%)
–[s]: “H. stato” (socioeconomic “principalities” of the wealthiest 1%)
–MFF: “Manichean force fields” that intertwine good and evil, being the mind’s creation, are sensory data subjectively experienced as such in the outside world. IAW Eq. (1), these fields – whether conceived as being subjective manifestations of mind, or objectively existing outside the mind – causally interconnect the socioeconomic “principalities” sustaining capitalism’s “wealthiest 1%” and “99%.”