Interview with Amartya Sen

I really cannot recommend this interview/ conversation with Amartya Sen too highly. It is wonderful in its detailed reminiscences about his intellectual upbringing, the place of Marxism in Cambridge economics, the importance of Marx, Arrow, and especially Adam Smith in his thought, name dropping (he actually was friendly with E.M. Forster), the place of philosophy in economics, his prickly intellectual relationship with his thesis advisor– the great economist Joan Robinson– life in India and Indian politics, etc. Throughout, his brilliance, empathy, and humor shine, as well as his false modesty. 

The interview has special resonance for me, perhaps, because during my formative years as a young undergrad economist at the University of Massachusetts in the 1970s, a number of the debates that played out at Cambridge a generation earlier were still raging, such as the so-called Cambridge-Cambridge capital controversy. Sen's takes on most of the matters he discusses seem spot-on to me. His near-reverence for Piero Sraffa, the leading figure of "neo-Ricardian" economics, also struck a chord. I learned much of what I know about Sraffa from an excellent economist who taught me at Stanford, Don Harris (see preceding post).