Amartya Sen

Ambika Chalwadi - 25
Ashutosh Bansal - 22
Anit Johnson - 21
Taher Dahodwala - 23
Prashant Yadav - 26
Amartya Sen
About Sen
 About Amartya Sen

• He was born in Santiniketan, India on

November 3, 1933
• He completed his B.A from Presidency
College Kolkata in 1953
• Finished his Doctorate from Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1959
• He has received number of honors and awards
from different institutions.
 Awards and Honors

• Doctor of Law, Honoris Causa, University of

Exeter, UK, 2008
• Doctor of Economic Sciences, Cape Town, South
Africa, 2006
• Honorary Doctor of Laws, Mount Holyoke
College, USA, 2003
• Honorary D. Litt., University of Mumbai, India,
2002
• Bharat Ratna, 1999
• Nobel Prize 1998
 Publications

• Choice of Techniques
• Collective Choice and Social Welfare
• Growth Economics
• Employment, Technology, and Development
• Poverty and Famines
• Choice, Welfare and Measurement
• Resources, Values and Development,
• Commodities and Capabilities,
• The Standard of Living,
Contd…

• On Ethics and Economics

• Hunger and Public Action
• The Political Economy of Hunger
• Inequality Reexamined
• The Quality of Life
• Economic Development and Social Opportunity
• Indian Development: Selected Regional
Perspectives
 ARTICLES

• SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY

• WELFARE ECONOMICS
• ECONOMIC MEASUREMENT
• AXIOMATIC CHOICE THEORY
• RATIONALITY AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOUR
• ECONOMIC METHODOLOGY
• FOOD, FAMINES AND HUNGER
• GENDER, FAMILY AND FEMINIST ECONOMICS
• CAPITAL, GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION
Contd...
• ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
• PROJECT EVALUATION AND COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
• EDUCATION AND MANPOWER PLANNING
• LABOUR AND EMPLOYMENT
• THE INDIAN ECONOMY
• INDIAN SOCIETY, CULTURE AND POLITICS
• POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT
• HEALTH
• SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHY
• ETHICS AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY
Choice of Techniques
 Choice of Techniques
• What is Choice of Techniques?
– It is a method of production where more than one
method is possible. If more than one set of inputs
can produce the outputs, choice of techniques must
be made.
• Choice of techniques explains the maximization of
the surplus with a view to maximizing the rate of
growth of national income and eventually t he rate of
growth of consumption per capita (assuming that the
rate of population growth is a constant).
 Need for Choice of Techniques

• To define the criteria's on which choices can be made

in a planned economy between various techniques of
production.

Interpretations of “Change in Technique”

• Capital-Labour ratio.

• Change in type of Capital and Labour used.

• Figure 1 shows equal product curves. A technique is
constant along any given ray from origin. A change
which involves a movement from a given ray is
defined as a change in the technique of production.

• In Figure 1, vertical axis might measure the units of

capital where capital is comprised of spades, while
another production function might be drawn for other
type of capital. Eg.Tractor.
 Modifications to the theory
• Mr. Sen also incorporated the influence of international
trade and choices between imports, domestic
production, domestic consumption and exports.
• He also formulated the problem of choice when future
income and consumption streams grow unsteadily or
change their pattern because of technological change or
other unforeseen developments, and formulated the
problem of maximizing an objective function defined
over such income or consumption streams
Freedom
 Food and Freedom
• Food for Freedom and Freedom for Food
– Grub first then Ethics
• Ethics may seem like a much more remote and
much less immediate subject than the
command over food that we need to survive.
• Freedom too - as an important concept in
ethics - may seem to be far less immediate
than the compelling demands of grabbing
grub.
Social Choice
 Social ChoiceTheory
• It is a theoretical framework for measuring
individual interests, values or welfares as an
aggregate towards collective decision.
• A non theoretical example of a collective
decision is passing a set of laws under a
constitution.
• Social choice theory blends elements of
welfare economics and voting theory and
generalises them.
 Interpersonal Comparison
of Utility(ICU)
• Interpersonal Utility Comparison states that
some mental states are easier to compare.
• However from Amartya Sen’s example,it
should not be difficult to say that Emperor’s
Nero’s gain from burning Rome did not
outweigh the loss of the rest of the romans.
• Hence Harsanyi and Sen argue we can have
partial comparability. Some mental states are
easier to compare than others and we can
proceed with I C U.
 Malleable Mental States

• Sen however proposes pushing beyond

partial comparability.

• Sen believes that ICU even if it were perfect,

would still lead to sub optimal social choices
because mental states are malleable
Contd…

• Sen proposes interpersonal comparisons

based on a wider range of real data.
Particularly Sen is worried about access to
advantage , which he measures by a
person’s access to advantage which he
measures by a person’s access to basic
needs- satisfying goods like food ,freedom
and capabilities.
Poverty & Entitlement
 Poverty and Entitlement

• What is poverty?
• Poverty is social phenomenon in which a
section of society is unable to fulfill even its
basic necessities of life..
• Starvation statements translate readily 
into statements of ownership of food by
persons.
• Eg. Ownership of Loaf of Bread
 Entitlement

What is Entitlement?
It is ownership or right to hold any thing be it
any Asset, Food, money, Etc
Entitlement relations typically include the
following:
– trade- based entitlement
– production- based entitlement
– own- labor entitlement
– inheritance and transfer entitlement
Poverty level Across the world
 Structural Adjustment - Causes of poverty

• Structural policies prescribed by IMF and

World Bank as conditions for loans and
repayment .
• Resulted in health, education and other vital
social services around the world.
 Poverty Facts
• Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less
than $2.50 a day.
• The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted
Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the
world’s 7 richest people combined.
• Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a
book or sign their names.
• 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world).
640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no
access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health
services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of
5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).
Thank you