Inequality: What Can Be Done? By Anthony Atkinson. Harvard University Press; 384 pages; $29.95 and £19.95.
CONTEMPORARY books on inequality are divided into those published “BC”, or before “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty, or “AP”, for after Piketty. The 44-year-old French economic historian’s study of rising wealth and income inequality, which first came out in French in August 2013, caused a storm when it was published in English seven months later and became an international bestseller. The book did an excellent job of focusing people’s minds on the subject. It also set the lines of empirical battle and even offered a possible remedy: a global tax on wealth. If Mr Piketty whetted the public’s appetite for discussions of inequality, he also made it far more difficult for subsequent authors to say something new and original about it.
That is unfortunate for Sir Anthony Atkinson, a British economist who has now written his own book. Sir Anthony, who is 70, has been working on inequality and poverty for more than four decades. He was an academic mentor to the young Mr Piketty and they...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1GmG4zr
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