Amartya Sen

Ambika Chalwadi - 25Ashutosh Bansal - 22Anit Johnson - 21Taher Dahodwala - 23Prashant 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

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

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