Sen, Amartya (1933–)

Amartya kumar sen was born in 1933, and grew up in Dhaka (then India, now Bangladesh). He has worked as a professor of economics since the age of 22, at Jadavpur University, the University of Delhi, the LSE, Oxford, Cambridge and (currently) Harvard. His many awards include the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Sen is a leading spokesperson for ethical and rigorous economic inquiry, although he abstains from activism and policy advice. He is critical of neoclassical economists' attachment to utilitarianism and markets, but has not adopted the structuralist reasoning and Marxist approaches of their critics.

His “cautious boldness” has been applied to social choice theory, welfare economics, the understanding and measurement of poverty, explanations of famine and hunger, agrarian change, gender and rural development in South ...