Not surprisingly, the qz.com article distorts the meaning of the original paper and looking at the comments, they seem to follow the false, but suggested interpretation of the paper that qz gives.
It's useful to note the title of the paper: What’s your (sur)name? Intergenerational mobility over six centuries. This paper is not tracking wealth, it's tracking income via tax records. It notes things like people who are lawyers or bankers now were more likely to share surnames with people in similar professions in the 15th century. It is not tracking inter-generation transfers of wealth.
In fact, qz even drops the most interesting conclusion in the article, which is their measurement of changing intergenerational income mobility overtime. They measure inelasticity at > .8 in Renaissance Florence and a generally static society until the industrial revolution, with inelasticity coming down starting in the 20th century.
The article isn't about secret trusts set up by the Medici, but the more prosaic fact that if you father and grandfather were lawyers, you're more likely to be one too. Still interesting, but it's not evidence that families were "able to maintain their wealth" through revolutions at all.
This also looks like it's more work in the same direction as the "The Son Also Rises" ( http://amzn.to/2jFnUmZ ).
There are actually a lot of studies of this nature, across Europe, Asia and the Americas. This result is not unique to Florence - you get much the same result everywhere in the world.
Furthermore, this result seems primarily driven by factors intrinsic to the people/families themselves and not to the society they live in. There are a number of invisible subgroups (e.g. "New France", or people with names like Bauchau) which underperform or overperform across the generations. And when people shift from one society to another (e.g. West Bengal to America), the effects persist.
But, but... the Medici rule the entire planet from their throne in outer space, Assassin's Creed told me so! (I didn't play much of the series, this is probably not legit). How dare your facts get in the way of my supernaturally attracted perception?
It's useful to note the title of the paper: What’s your (sur)name? Intergenerational mobility over six centuries. This paper is not tracking wealth, it's tracking income via tax records. It notes things like people who are lawyers or bankers now were more likely to share surnames with people in similar professions in the 15th century. It is not tracking inter-generation transfers of wealth.
In fact, qz even drops the most interesting conclusion in the article, which is their measurement of changing intergenerational income mobility overtime. They measure inelasticity at > .8 in Renaissance Florence and a generally static society until the industrial revolution, with inelasticity coming down starting in the 20th century.
The article isn't about secret trusts set up by the Medici, but the more prosaic fact that if you father and grandfather were lawyers, you're more likely to be one too. Still interesting, but it's not evidence that families were "able to maintain their wealth" through revolutions at all.