London School of Economics presentation, London

May 19, 2005 
London, United Kingdom

Michael Walton presented the report's preliminary findings to faculty members and students.  The audience appreciated the contents of the report and made several important comments, amongst which:

• Robert Wade suggested we had shifted to an equality of opportunity concept as a means of preserving a market-oriented approach.  I and others contested this, whilst accepting that equal access to markets is a central part of the message.

• John Sutton (chair of the economics department) gave a gratifying distillation in which he argued that the whole presentation reflected the currents of thought of the past decade or so that build arguments around how specific inequalities both generate further inequalities and interact with the growth process.  He included political inequalities within the range of political inequalities.  Sutton and others felt the main message summarized in the final slide failed to do justice to the diagnosis and policy proposals previously presented.