I was asked to do this book review in September 2016. I hesitated because the book had
been out for more than a year and had already been reviewed prominently. But in the end
I could not resist reacting to a book which Tony Atkinson said “is the result of research on
the economics of inequality carried out since I graduated as an economist in 1966.” I agreed
to deliver the review by April of 2017. I was not to know that in January of 2017 we would
lose the leading inequality analyst of our times. I wish now that I had done the review in
time to show Tony how much I admired the book and its author.
The book is in three parts—“Diagnosis”, “Proposals for Action” and “Can it be Done”.
Of these by far the most striking is the second part, Tony’s proposals for action. The first
part is a review of work which Tony himself led, and which is now familiar not only to
analysts but the public more generally. The famous charts showing the “Inequality Turn” in
the US, UK and Europe from the 1980s onwards, the discussion of the role of globalization,
technology and progressivity of tax and transfer policies in explaining these trends—these
are now well ingrained in students and scholars of inequality. The third part also takes up
on a number of themes in Tony’s writings—the tradeoff between equity and efficiency,
the constraint that mobility of capital and labor pose on progressive taxation, and fiscal
constraints to redistributive policy. But it is in the second part that we see a Tony Atkinson
we have not seen before, at least not with such clarity. Here we see a list of bold and far
reaching proposals—the “What Can Be Done” portion of the argument. My review will
focus on these proposals.
The 15 Proposals and 5 “Ideas to Pursue”, gathered together on pp 302–305 of the book,
constitute an Atkinsonian manifesto, challenging us to confront the issue of inequality head
on, and not as an add on:
“Crucially, I do not accept that rising inequality is inevitable: it is not solely the product
of market forces, outside our control.” (p. 302).

• Tony Atkinson and What Can Be Done About Inequality