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Tony Atkinson, my hero

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Stephen P Jenkins
Stephen P Jenkins*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
*
Stephen P Jenkins, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK. Email: s.jenkins@lse.ac.uk
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Type
Articles
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1: Symposium on inequality in honour of AB Atkinson , March 2018 , pp. 50 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018

In April 2015, I completed an appreciation of Tony’s contributions to Economics. The opening paragraphs state:

It is an honour to write about Tony Atkinson’s contributions to economics … From a personal point of view, I owe Tony a huge amount for his exemplary supervision of my doctoral thesis, his friendly but incisive comments on later research, and his ever-present general encouragement, support, and inspiration. For more than thirty-five years, answering the ‘What would Tony think?’ question has been a means by which I and many of my contemporaries have assessed our own research. (Our salutes to him are collected in Reference Jenkins and MicklewrightJenkins and Micklewright, 2007.) These personal benefits are of course separate from the immense contributions to economics that Tony has made …

Tony Atkinson has made fundamental and original theoretical contributions to economics in general, and to public economics and the analysis of economic inequality in particular. He has also undertaken original and innovative empirical analysis of economic inequalities, and of their relationship to economic institutions such as the welfare state. His work has brought the analysis of distributional issues back to a central position in economics, arguably a position that it has not had since the period of the Classical economists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is no overstatement to say that the modern analysis of economic inequality started with Reference AtkinsonTony’s 1970 paper in the Journal of Economic Theory. (Reference Jenkins and CordJenkins, 2017: 1151–2)

I cannot post the published version of the essay online, but I would be pleased to email a personal copy of a pre-publication version to anyone who wishes to have one.

The sentences above do not communicate enough about Tony’s personal qualities – he was a role model in those as with everything else. He was sagacious in so many fields and yet so modest and kind, and the epitome of decency, humanity, and collegiality. Despite being very busy, Tony found time for so many of us. He was a continuing source of encouragement, support, and inspiration. He will be sorely missed. Tony is and will remain my hero.

References

Atkinson, AB (1970) On the measurement of inequality. Journal of Economic Theory 2(3): 244–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, SP, Micklewright, J (2007) Inequality and Poverty Re-Examined. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, SP (2017) Anthony B. Atkinson (1944-), chapter 52 in: Cord, R (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1051–1074.Google Scholar