What Can Be Done?
This past weekend, two days of events held in the UK honored the outstanding work and life of former LIS President Sir Tony Atkinson. On Friday 16 February 2018, the London School of Economics (LSE), organized a ‘Tony Atkinson Memorial Event’. Distinguished scholars were invited to present talks linked to the ‘15 proposals’ that Tony laid out in his 2015 book, ‘Inequality – What can be done’.
Among the speakers were Richard Blundell (UCL), Stephen Machin (LSE), Mervyn King (NYU), Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia), Holly Sutherland (Essex), François Bourguignon (PSE), and Janet Gornick (GC-CUNY and LIS). Peter Diamond (MIT) and Amartya Sen (Harvard) spoke via videotape.
On Saturday morning 17 February 2018, Oxford’s Nuffield College hosted the ‘Tony Atkinson Memorial Seminar’ – a series of short presentations focused on wealth research (Salvatore Morelli, GC-CUNY), top incomes and gender (Sarah Voitchovsky, Graduate Institute Geneva), the work of ‘Our World in Data’ (Max Roser, Oxford), and the power of the microsimulation tool EUROMOD (Holly Sutherland, Essex). A second set of presentations by Christoph Lakner (World Bank) and Sabina Alkire (Oxford) focused on poverty measurement around the world. The event closed with a presentation by John Micklewright (UCL) about his ongoing project, with Andrea Brandolini (Bank of Italy) and others, to complete Tony’s book on global poverty, based on the partial manuscript that Tony left behind.
On Saturday afternoon, at Nuffield College, seven people offered personal remembrances, against the backdrop of music chosen by Tony. The event brought together several hundred of Tony’s family, friends, former students, collaborators, and colleagues. The program – below – was followed by a reception.
| Dennis Brain – Mozart Horn Concerto | |
| Judith Atkinson | |
| Nick Stern | |
| Joan Baez – Blowin’ in the Wind | |
| Eric Marlier | |
| Claudine McCreadie | |
| Holly Sutherland | |
| Rodriguez – Sugar Man | |
| Janet Gornick | |
| Christopher Bliss | |
| George Harrison – Within You Without You | |