Abstract: In the contemporary liberal egalitarian tradition, the theory of luck egalitarianism has been the dominant explanation of why, and which, inequalities are unjust.  According to luck egalitarianism, inequalities that stem from matters of luck—such as a person’s gender or race—are morally arbitrary and thus unjust.  Conversely, inequalities that result from individuals’ voluntary choices are morally permissible.  Luck egalitarianism has been charged with entailing morally implausible prescriptions. Kok-Chor Tan has recently developed a version of the theory that is supposed to avoid this problem. He calls this version institutional luck egalitarianism (ILE). ILE makes central use of the concept of institutional influence. I distinguish different ways of understanding this concept and argue that on each ILE fails to answer the charge of moral implausibility. I also explain why the issue of how to understand institutional influence has significant implications for debates about the potential injustice of global inequality.