Amartya Sen Reading Adam Smith (Report‪)‬

Abstract: Amartya Sen drew upon Adam Smith's rich and nuanced understanding of human behaviour in the construction of his own economic framework and, in the process, challenged the narrow interpretation of Smith's representation of human behaviour that is traditionally advanced by neoclassical economists. In this paper I analyse the relationship between the views of Sen and Smith to develop a deeper understanding of Sen's theory of economic behaviour and his 'capability approach'. 1 Introduction