POOR, RELATIVELY SPEAKING. FIFTEENTH GEARY LECTURE, 1982

When on the 6th of January 1941, amidst the roar of the guns of the second world war, President Roosevelt announced that "in the future days.., we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms", including "freedom from want", he was voicing what was soon to become one of the major themes of the post-war era. While the elimination of poverty all over the world had become a much-discussed ir/ternational issue, it was in the richer countries that an immediate eradication seemed possible. That battle was joined soon enough after the war in those affluent countries and the ending of poverty had been a major issue in their policy discussions

Rational fools: a critique of the behavioral foundations of economic theory

No abstractSen clarifies, almost from the beginning, that his primary concern is not with the relation of postulated, traditional, economic models to the real economic world, but with the accuracy of answers to well-defined questions posed with pre-selected assumptions. One of those assumptions reflects a particular ‘concept of man’. The conception of man in traditional as well as in the welfare economic models tends to be that of a self-seeking egoist; an animal or a machine which is always seeking maximizing its own utility, except through inconsistency. Sen indicates that this approach of ‘definitional egoism’ sometimes goes under the name of rational choice, and it involves nothing other than internal consistency. The afore-mentioned concept of man in terms of a definitional egoism implies in turn an arbitrarily narrow definition of rationality. Having established the necessity of accepting ‘commitment’ in our reasoning, Sen shows that admitting such kind of behavior has far- reaching consequences on the nature of many economic models. Hence, these models either have to be reformulated or they will continue to be based upon the dominant image of the ‘rational fool’. Our authorized translation is based on the initial publication of Sen’s article in the Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1977

Assessing Tourism Development from Sen’s Capability Approach

The purpose of this study is to assess tourism development in the context of Sen’s capability approach. The study developed a model to investigate the relationship between tourism development and human development while focusing on two countries, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The study applied a cointegration technique based on the Granger representation theorem. Overall, tourism development and human development reveals a tenuous relationship in both cases, reflecting some threshold effect. The importance of tourism growth is merited in the distribution of its benefits and the extent that tourism receipts are allocated to support human development (public health, education, safety, etc.). Rising incomes will not necessarily translate into human development performance, thereby rendering support to Sen’s contention that well-being should not be measured by its instrumental antecedents (such as income) alone. Private incomes through tourism expansion seem to matter most at lower levels of human development

Caste, Kinship, and Life Course: Rethinking Women's Work and Agency in Rural South India

This paper reexamines the linkages between women's work, agency, and well-being based on a household survey and in-depth interviews conducted in rural Tamil Nadu in 2009 and questions the prioritization of workforce participation as a path to gender equality. It emphasizes the need to unpack the nature of work performed by and available to women and its social valuation, as well as women's agency, particularly its implications for decision making around financial and nonfinancial household resources in contexts of socioeconomic change. The effects of work participation on agency are mediated by factors like age and stage in the life cycle, reproductive success, and social location – especially of caste – from which women enter the workforce

Social Preferences and the Efficiency of Bilateral Exchange

Under what conditions do social preferences, such as altruism or a concern for fair outcomes, generate efficient trade? I analyze theoretically a simple bilateral exchange game: Each player sequentially takes an action that reduces his own material payoff but increases the other player’s. Each player’s preferences may depend on both his/her own material payoff and the other player’s. I identify necessary conditions and sufficient conditions on the players’ preferences for the outcome of their interaction to be Pareto efficient. The results have implications for interpreting the rotten kid theorem, gift exchange in the laboratory, and gift exchange in the field