Resources, Values, and Development

Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor at Harvard University.

• Preface Introduction Part I: Institutions and Motivation Peasants and Dualism with or without Surplus Labour Labour Allocation in a Cooperative Enterprise The Profit Motive Part II: Isolation and Social Investment On Optimizing the Rate of Saving Isolation, Assurance and the Social Rate of Discount Terminal Capital and Optimum Savings On Some Debates in Capital Theory Approaches to to the Choice of Discount Rates for Social Benefit-Cost Analysis Part III: Shadow Pricing and Employment Optimum Savings, Technical Choice and the Shadow Price of Labour Control Areas and Accounting Prices: An Approach to Economic Evaluation Employment, Institutions and Technology: Some Policy Issues Part IV: Morals and Mores Ethical Issues in Income Distribution: National and International Rights and Capabilities Poor, Relatively Speaking Family and Food: Sex Bias in Poverty Economics and the Family Part V: Goods and Well-being The Welfare Basis of Real Income Comparisons Ingredients of Famine Analysis: Availability and Entitlements Development: Which Way Now? Goods and People Name Index Subject Index

Amartya Sen, [the 1998] Nobel Prizewinner in Economics, has helped give voice to the world's poor. And that is no small matter, for the very lives of the world's poor may depend on having their voices heard. In a lifetime of careful scholarship, Sen has repeatedly returned to a basic theme: even impoverished societies can improve the well-being of their least advantaged members. Societies that attend to the poorest of the poor can save their lives, promote their longevity and increase their opportunities through education and productive work. Societies that neglect the poor, on the other hand, may inadvertently allow millions to die of famine--even in the middle of an economic boom, as occurred during the great famine in Bengal, India, in 1943, the subject of Sen's most famous case study...Sen [delivers a] powerful message: annual income growth is not enough to achieve development. Societies must pay attention to social goals as well, always leaning toward their most vulnerable citizens, and overcoming deep-rooted biases to invest in the health and well-being of girls as well as boys. In a world in which 1.5 billion people subsist on less than $1 a day, this Nobel Prize can be not just a celebration of a wonderful scholar but also a clarion call to attend to the urgent needs and hopes of the world's poor.