UNU-WIDER Amartya Sen

Trinity College
Cambridge, United Kingdom

The award of the 1998 Nobel Prize for economics on October 14 is in recognition of the extensive work by Professor Amartya Sen on welfare. It is a victory for the entire discipline of development economics and for UNU-WIDER. Amartya Sen was a founder of the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University. His work is a central contribution to the theory of social choice, measurement of welfare and poverty, and study of the root causes of famine.

Professor Amartya Sen not only helped with the establishment of UNU-WIDER but has been involved with a large number of eminent economists in the work of the Institute in its early phase. Sen was the Research Adviser of several of UNU-WIDER projects during 1985-1991 including: Food Strategies; Public Action for Social Security in Developing Countries; Quality of Life and Living Standards; Social Security: Comparative Indian Experiences; Hunger and Poverty: Social Change and Public Policy in Rural West Bengal. Professor Sen worked at UNU-WIDER in Helsinki over an extensive period and participated in many conferences.

Sen's contribution to the work of UNU-WIDER has resulted in a large number of publications, including the following books published by Oxford University Press: Hunger and Public Action (with Jean Drèze, 1989); The Political Economy of Hunger: Volume I - Entitlement and Well-Being; Volume II - Famine Prevention, Volume III -Endemic Hunger (with Jean Drèze, 1990-1991); Social Security in Developing Countries (with Ehtisham Ahmad, Jean Drèze and John Hills, 1991), The Quality of Life (with Martha Nussbaum, 1993); The Political Economy of Hunger: Selected Essays (with Jean Drèze and Athar Hussain, 1995); and Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives (with Jean Drèze, 1995). In addition UNU-WIDER has published five Working Papers and a Research for Action study by Professor Amartya Sen.