Ultimately, I was surprised by just how many economists claimed to have read the whole book. All told, 55 percent responded, “Yes, I’ve read it.” But 10 percent chose the response “Sort of, I’ve started it or skimmed it.” An additional 35 percent chose “No, but I’ve followed the debate, reading reviews, commentary or critique.” And at least one of these respondents said they had seen Mr. Piketty present his work. There were no economists who simply responded “No,” suggesting that all of these economists had engaged with Mr. Piketty’s ideas at least to some degree.

Of course, these numbers should be interpreted with a healthy heaping of salt. The sample is small. My assurances that the survey was anonymous may not have been sufficient to elicit honest responses. And if those who read the book were more willing to be surveyed about it, my sample probably overstates Mr. Piketty’s readership. But even if we make the extreme assumption that all of the nonrespondents skipped the book, then the lower bound is that nearly one in three leading economists have read Mr. Piketty’s best seller.

If you lined up all the economists end to end, we probably still wouldn’t agree about what to do about inequality. But many of us would have done the required reading to debate the issues seriously.