Like so many others in and connected with STICERD and
LSE, I am only here because of Tony. Not
just because I had the immense luck to be recruited by him to join STICERD's
Welfare State Programme, which he established, in 1986, but because his work
acted as the inspiration for my whole career - his book, 'Unequal Shares' was
the first book I was advised (by Mervyn King, as it happens) to read when I
decided to switch to economics at university.
That left me believing that who gets what and why - distribution and
inequality - was at the heart of what economics should be about. But he was an inspiration in so many other
ways. We have lost our most generous and
supportive role model, but are so fortunate to have known him and to have been
touched by his great career and life. He
was the epitome of what Keynes said that economics was for - to understand the
present, in the light of the past, for the purposes of the future.
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