Robert Cassen

According to legend, when Paul Samuel-son left the room after his PhD oral, one of the reputed economists examining him turned to the others and asked: ‘Did we pass?’ A reviewer confronted with this collection of papers by Amartya Sen is likely to feel much the same. The author has a mind like a search-light, illuminating his material with an intense lucidity; he has a gift for looking at assumptions his colleagues have long taken for granted, and finding them defective. Economics as it is commonly taught would be somewhat different if the insights propounded here were taken to heart.