Economists are not supposed to base their conclusions on anecdotal data -- though most of them do, at least occasionally. It's always nice when anecdotal evidence confirms your hypotheses, and besides, it's much more fun gathering anecdotes than hard data.
Anyway, Thomas Piketty, in "Capital in the 21st century", has blown right through that taboo and into a whole new level: fiction! In trying to reconstruct the returns on capital from two centuries ago, he quotes extensively from both Jane Austen (especially "Mansfield Park") and Balzac ("Pere Goriot").
Piketty argues that it was well-known in the early 19th century that inheritance rather than work was the only way to attain wealth. Further, he cites his two authors as evidence that "everyone" knew that the annual real return on capital was about 5 percent. So, when Mrs Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice" keeps drooling that one of her daughters' suitors "has ten thousand pounds", she means that his capital of that amount will bring in an annual income of 500 pounds, more than enough to keep any of the young Misses Bennet in the style that their mother deems appropriate.
Piketty can get away with this because he has collected so much hard data on wealth and income. Those statistics clearly show that Austen and Balzac's characters had it about right: over the long term, annual returns on capital do indeed average very close to 5 percent, with surprisingly little variance across countries.
Not all of Piketty's pop culture references are from two centuries ago. Tarantino gets a shout, and the animated movie "The Aristocats" helps him make a point about the Belle Epoque. Piketty's dogged insistence on establishing his main points beyond any reasonable doubt can be a bit tedious at times, so these quirky little asides provide some welcome light relief. He's definitely not your average economist.
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