7 Posts found for Author: Amartya Sen

While a number of socialist critics, most notably Karl Marx, influentially made a case for censuring and ultimately supplanting capitalism, the huge limitations of relying entirely on the market economy and the profit motive were also clear enough even to Adam Smith. Indeed, early advocates of the use of markets, including Smith, did not take the pure market mechanism to be a freestanding performer of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Source: The New York Review of Books | Subject: Economics

Even though people seek trade because of self-interest…nevertheless an economy can operate effectively only on the basis of trust among different parties.

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Source: The New York Review of Books | Subjects: Economics, Trust

[Adam] Smith rejects interventions that exclude the market—but not interventions that include the market while aiming to do those important things that the market may leave undone.

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Source: The New York Review of Books | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics

Smith viewed markets and capital as doing good work within their own sphere, but first, they required support from other institutions—including public services such as schools—and values other than pure profit seeking, and second, they needed restraint and correction by still other institutions—e.g., well-devised financial regulations and state assistance to the poor—for preventing instability, inequity, and injustice.

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Source: The New York Review of Books | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics

Historically, capitalism did not emerge until new systems of law and economic practice protected property rights and made an economy based on ownership workable. Commercial exchange could not effectively take place until business morality made contractual behavior sustainable and inexpensive—not requiring constant suing of defaulting contractors, for example. Investment in productive businesses could not flourish until the higher rewards from corruption had been moderated. Profit-oriented … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Source: The New York Review of Books | Subjects: Capitalism, Economics

The most immediate failure of the market mechanism lies in the things that the market leaves undone. Smith’s economic analysis went well beyond leaving everything to the invisible hand of the market mechanism. He was not only a defender of the role of the state in providing public services, such as education, and in poverty relief, he was also deeply concerned about the inequality and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Amartya Sen | Subject: Economics

Amartya Sen takes on free-market orthodoxy by looking at what its patron saint, Adam Smith, had to say. In Capitalism Beyond the Crisis, Sen uses a Smithian prism to look at three big questions:

1. Do we need a new capitalism?
2. What kind of economics institutions and priorities do we need?
3. How can we get out of our current crisis with as little damage as possible?
[BNET … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Amartya Sen | Subject: Economics