Economics with a Moral Compass?

Welfare Economics: Past, Present and Future Angus Deaton in Conversation with Amartya Sen

Saturday, November 17th, 2018

2:00pm – 5:00pm

New York University Kimmel Center Rosenthal Pavilion (10th Floor)

60 Washington Square South New York, NY 10012

Proposed Program

1:30pm – 2:00pm Doors Open, Guest Arrival 2:00pm – 2:05pm Welcome Remarks on Behalf of New York University By: C. Cybele Raver, NYU Deputy Provost 2:05pm – 4:00pm Angus Deaton in Conversation with Amartya Sen 4:00pm – 5:00pm Networking Reception Speakers: Angus Deaton, Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus, Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University Conversation Chair: Tim Besley; School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); Editorial Committee Member of the Annual Review of Economics

Overview: Many believe that economics and economists have an important role to play in creating better societies. The bedrock of the economic approach is the field of welfare economics which studies how to conceptualize and measure welfare with a view to designing better policies and institutions. It also allows ethics and economics to speak to each other. Yet, normative aspects of economics are sometimes dismissed as less scientific and therefore marginal to the discipline. And this is blamed, for example, for blinding economists to concerns about poverty and inequality. This conversation will focus on bringing ethical issues into economics, and the implications that this has for the practice and teaching of economics. Event Co-Hosts: The Annual Review of Economics covers significant developments in the field of economics, including macroeconomics and money; microeconomics, including economic psychology; international economics; public finance; health economics; education; economic growth and technological change; economic development; social economics, including culture, institutions, social interaction, and networks; game theory, political economy, and social choice; and more. www.annualreviews.org/journal/economics Founded in 2006, the NYU Development Research Institute (DRI) is home to a growing team of researchers and students. Through our work, we seek to expand the number and diversity of serious commentators on the state of foreign aid and development. Our ultimate goal is to have a positive impact on the lives of the poor, who deserve the benefit of high-quality, clear-eyed, hard-headed economic research applied to the problems of world poverty. www.nyudri.org The C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics has as its major objective the fostering and development of rigorous applied work in the economic sciences, accomplished through a commitment to providing research support and creating forums for intellectual exchange. The C.V. Starr Center, housed within the Department of Economics at New York University, provides direct financial support for research faculty as well as for doctoral students involved in applied research activities. The Center regularly sponsors academic conferences, hosts renowned visiting scholars, and schedules plenary lectures given to a broad academic audience on topics of special significance to contemporary economic policy and application. www.cvstarrnyu.org

Supported by:

NYU Office of the Provost NYU Conversations in the Social Sciences

NYU Africa House

Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is also Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Earlier on he was Professor of Economics at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics, and Drummond Professor of Political Economy at Oxford University. Amartya Sen has served as President of the Econometric Society, the American Economic Association, the Indian Economic Association, and the International Economic Association. His research has ranged over social choice theory, economic theory, ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, theory of measurement, decision theory, development economics, public health, and gender studies. Amartya Sen’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and include Choice of Techniques (1960), Growth Economics (1970), Collective Choice and Social Welfare (1970), Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), Commodities and Capabilities (1987), The Standard of Living

(1987), Development as Freedom (1999), Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006), The Idea of Justice (2009), and (jointly with Jean Dreze) An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions (2013), and The Country of First Boys (2015). Amartya Sen’s awards include Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur (France); the National Humanities Medal (USA); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); Aztec Eagle (Mexico); Edinburgh Medal (UK); the George Marshall Award (USA); the Eisenhower Medal (USA); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Sir Angus Deaton is Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School where he taught for thirty years. He is also Presidential Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. He is the author of five books including, most recently, The Great Escape: health, wealth, and the origins of inequality. His interests include health, development, poverty, inequality, and wellbeing. He has written extensively on happiness, on foreign aid, and on how we should collect evidence for good policy. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was President of the American Economic Association in 2009, and in 2015 he received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.” He was born in Edinburgh in Scotland and is a British and an American citizen; his BA, MA, and PhD are from Cambridge University.

He was made a Knight Bachelor for his services to economics and international affairs in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List in 2016.

Sir Tim Besley is School Professor of Economics and Political Science and W. Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). From September 2006 to August 2009, he served as an external member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and since 2015 has been a member of the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission. He is also a Senior Fellow in the Institutions, Organizations and Growth Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). Professor Besley was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and Oxford University where he became a prize fellow of All Souls College. He taught subsequently at Princeton before being appointed Professor in the economics department at the LSE in 1995. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, the British Academy, and

the European Economic Association. Currently, he is an Editorial Committee Member of the Annual Review of Economics. He is also a foreign honorary member of the American Economic Association and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as President of the International Economic Association and of the European Economic Association. He is currently serving as the President of the Econometric Society. Professor Besley is a past co-editor of the American Economic Review, and a 2005 winner of the Yrjö Jahnsson Award of the European Economics Association. His research, which mostly has a policy focus, is in Development Economics, Public Economics and Political Economy. In 2018, he was made a Knight Bachelor for services to Economics and Public Policy.