Rob asks about Sen. Here's a start. 2 web resources are the official "Nobel" site, dry but extensive: http://www.nobel.se/announcement-98/economics98.html and the relevant page from the excellent History of Economic Thought site, which provides references. http://www.econ.jhu.edu/People/Fonseca/HET/sen.htm Sen has tried to push out the boundaries of the neoclassical paradigm, especially in providing a basis for interpersonal comparisons. However his framework of "entitlements" (different sources of income or support), "capabilities," (abilities/freedoms to get what you want,) and "functionings," (actual desired results like being well-nourished), can be useful even for non-neoclassicals. Famines are associated with collapses of people's entitlement bundles, in particular when a lot of people are reduced to the sole entitlement of selling their labor, deprived of entitlements based in access to individual or common land, family support, government support, and so forth. Then a drop in the wage relative to food prices leads to widespread starvation even if there's lots of food. The framework has also been useful in understanding women's poverty; I use this material as a staple in my development courses. There are other pen-l participants who have a much more nuanced sense of the whole of his work and its relevance to heterodox paradigms. Best, Colin [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://weber.u.washington.edu/~danby/
