France's star economist Thomas Piketty has declined the country's highest award, the Legion d'Honneur, local media said on Thursday.
Mr Piketty (43) shot to fame and topped best-seller lists in 2014 with his controversial book on wealth and inequality.
"I refuse this nomination because I don't think it's up to a government to say who is honourable," Mr Piketty told AFP news agency. "They would do better to focus on reviving growth in France and Europe. "
Together with Nobel Economics laureate Jean Tirole and Nobel Literature prize winner Patrick Modiano, Mr Piketty was named on Wednesday on a list of new recipients of the Legion d'Honneur, awarded by president Francois Hollande.
His book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" has attracted both praise and invective on its way to the top of the Amazon. com books best-seller list.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has called it a game-changer that demolishes the myth that "great wealth is earned and deserved".
Once close to France’s ruling Socialist party, Mr Piketty has become very critical of Mr Hollande.
“There is a degree of improvisation in Francois Hollande’s economic policy that is appalling,” he told Le Monde daily in June.