Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen is an Indian economist and philosopher awarded the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics, including his work on social choice theory, poverty, and famine. He is best known for the capability approach, which argues that development and well-being should be measured by the real freedoms people have to do and become what they value, such as being able to vote, be educated, or receive health care, rather than by income or output measures such as gross domestic product alone. His research on famine showed that many modern famines occur without an overall shortage of food, driven instead by a collapse in people's entitlement to obtain it. Sen has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard, where he holds a University Professorship.