Sen, Amartya Kumar

Sen, Amartya Kumar, 1933–, Indian economist, b. Bengal, Ph.D. Cambridge, 1959. He has taught at Jadavpur Univ., Kolkata (1956–58), the Univ. of Delhi (1963–7l), the London School of Economics (197l–77), Oxford (1977–88), and Harvard (1987–98, 2003–) and was the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (1998–2003). A specialist in welfare and development economics who is concerned with social justice and democracy, he helped develop social choice theory, did noted and influential work on the causes of famine, and has been critical of the assumption that self-interest is the prime economic motivator. In 1998 he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics. Among his many works are Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (1981), Development as Freedom (1999), An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (2013, with J. Drèze), and Home in the World: A Memoir (2021).

See W. Kuklys, Amartya Sen's Capability Approach: Theoretical Insights and Empirical Applications (2005); J. M. Alexander, Capabilities and Social Justice: The Political Philosophy of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (2008); R. Gotoh and P. Dumouchel, ed., Against Injustice: The New Economics of Amartya Sen (2009).

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