This volume presents a set of inter-related theses concerning the foundations of welfare economics, and in particular about the assessment of personal well-being and advantage. The argument presented focuses on the capability to function, such as what a person can do or can be, questioning in the pr[...]

This study was well-received and widely discussed when it appeared in hardback in 1990. It is devoted to analysis of the enduring problem of hunger in the modern world, and of the role that public action can play in countering it. The book is divided into four parts. The first attempts to provide [...]

This book brings together and develops some of the most important economic, social, and ethical ideas Sen has explored over the last two decades. It examines the claims of equality in social arrangements, stressing that we should be concerned with people's capabilities rather than either their resou[...]

In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know. Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence, millions of people living in rich and poor [...]

'I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell', writes Michael Polanyi, whose work paved the way for the likes of Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper. "The Tacit Dimension", originally published in 1967, argues that such tacit knowledge - tradition, inh[...]

Arguing that the violence of today's world is as much as factor of misunderstanding as it is of cultural differences, a Nobel Laureate explains that modern conflicts have origins in illusions about identity, morality, and other factors, in an account that presents the author's vision of how the worl[...]

In this elegant critique, Amartya Sen argues that a closer contact between welfare economics and modern ethical studies can substantively enrich and benefit both disciplines.He argues further that even predictive and descriptive economics can be helped by making more room for welfare economic consid[...]

In this deft analysis, Amartya Sen argues that the dictum "all men are created equal" serves largely to deflect attention from the fact that we differ in age, gender, talents, physical abilities as well as in material advantages and social background. He argues for concentrating on higher and more b[...]

This groundbreaking series brings together a critical selection of key papers by the Nobel Memorial Laureates in Economics that have helped shape the development and present state of economics. The editors have organised this comprehensive series by theme and each volume focuses on those Laureates w[...]