15 October 1998

PKESS CONFERENCE BY NOBEL LAUREATE PROFESSOR AMARTYA SEN

Professor Amartya Sen, the Indian philosopher and economist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics, yesterday (14 October), said at a Headquarters press conference yesterday afternoon that globalization could be a major force for prosperity if adequately backed by good national policy.

The main difficulty with globalization arose from failures in domestic policy, he said. Countries particularly threatened were those where human development had often been very poor. On balance, he said, major gains could be made by globalization. Even with the best scenario, there would be unexpected change, whether it arose from financial mismanagement or sudden changes in the world economy, and some people would suffer. A system of social safety nets would be needed, he said, adding that attention had to paid to that. Lack of social opportunities, such as literacy, good health care and macro-credit should be remedied. Globalization should be placed in a broader context and should be seen in terms of social and economic policies taken together.

Professor Sen, who teaches at Trinity College in Cambridge, United Kingdom, was awarded the prize for his work on the causes of famine, on inequality and on measurement of poverty. He learned of the award in New York early Wednesday morning. He had arrived for a memorial lecture he would deliver at the United Nations on Thursday in honour of Mahbub ul Haq, a leading development thinker and creator of the widely acclaimed United Nations development programme Human Development Report. The memorial will be held in the Economic and Social Council chamber at 10:45 a.m.

He told a correspondent that he was informed of the award by an official of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences who had obtained his telephone number from his wife at Cambridge. His initial thought on being awakened around 5 a.m. was that something terrible had happened, but he became happy when it "turned out to be good news".

The announcement of the prestigious prize referred to the contributions Professor Sen had made to welfare economics, which had helped in understanding the economic mechanisms underlying famines and poverty. The citation said that by combining tools from economics and philosophy, Professor Sen had restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of vital economic problems. That had opened up new fields of study for subsequent generations of researchers. Much of his work concerning development economics had concerned the welfare of the poorest in society, the citation said.

Prof. Sen told the press, in response to questions, that he was pleased that the Academy had focused on issues of welfare, inequality and poverty in

(more) Nobel Laureate Press Briefing - 2 - 15 October 1998 its press release announcing the award. He said many people, who he admired, were working in those areas of economics, and added that the award was a signal that their work was also indirectly being honoured. That area of economics was often neglected in media coverage and, yet it was of tremendous importance.

Professor Sen told a questioner that his work in the area of famine had been influenced by one which occurred in India in 1943 . A characteristic of famines was their extremely divisive phenomena. There was hardly a famine that affected more than 10 per cent of the population, and most famines affected less than five per cent. The fact that, at the time of the Indian famine, he did not know any one who was affected, indicated the nature of the class composition of famines. From his investigations of the phenomenon, it had become clear how restricted, classwise, famines were. (One of his best known books, published in 1981, was "Poverty and Famines"). The Nobel citation said that Professor Sen showed that "a profound understanding of famine requires a thorough analysis of how various social and economic factors influence different groups in society and determine their actual opportunities".

Replying to questions. Professor Sen said famines were easy to prevent, and that dictatorships or colonial governments very often had little incentive to prevent them. A democratic government would know that there was an incentive not to have a famine. If one reflected on countries currently suffering from famine, it. would be seen that they were without a democratic form of. government, he said. The issue of the linkage of famine to dictatorship was born of experience, he added. The absence of democracy was not just a violation of human rights and political liberty. It was also a major violation of people's security in the most basic sense — the security of survival. There was no better early warning system of famine than an active press and investigative reporters.

A release by the Office of the Spokesman for the Secretary-General circulated at the press briefing said a number of recipients of the Nobel prize for economics had worked with or for the United Nations. They included, besides Professor Sen: Sir Richard Stone (1984) United Nations Statistics; James Tobin (1981) Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Lawrence R. Klein (1980) Department for Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis; Sir Arthur Lewis (1979) United Nations Development Programme; Gunnar Myrdal (1974) Economic Commission for Europe Executive Secretary, Wassily Leontief (1973) Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Simon Juznets (1971) with the European Commission for Europe; and Jan Tinbergen (1969); Department for Economic and Social Affairs — shared with Ragnar Frisch.

* *** *