Amartya Sen as a Neoclassical Economist

Abstract

Amartya Sen is often described as an insightful critic of mainstream economics, and in particular, his work in development economics, alongside the construction of the capabilities approach, has been associated with endeavors to revisit both the theory and practice of the discipline. Despite his in-depth criticisms of certain aspects of mainstream economics, Sen’s extensive use of formal methods is suggestive of an ontological tension, one identified by Thorstein Veblen when commenting on some of his contemporaries and originally introducing the term “neoclassical.” Veblen argued that the work of these economists involved both an implicit recognition of a causal processual social ontology he associated with modern, thoroughly evolutionary, approaches and a commitment to a taxonomic conception of science—the latter relying on a set of methods that presupposed an associationist ontology of event regularities. For Veblen, the adherence to taxonomic methods was the classical feature of their work, and the commitment to an evolutionary viewpoint was the neo aspect. This article argues that the same tension runs through Sen’s contributions and that he is neoclassical in this specifically Veblenian sense. The assessment of the ontological inconsistencies in Sen’s work is shown to shed light on its reception within the economics academy.

Keywords:

• Amartya Sen
• Thorstein Veblen
• capability approach
• neoclassical economics
• economic methodology/ontology

JEL Classification Codes:

• A1
• Bl
• B2
• B3
• B4
• B5

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 To clarify, the emphasis on this kind of deductivism in the form of mathematical modelling, is a recent phenomenon as Marshall’s case, examined by Veblen, reveals. As Pratten (2021) notes, Marshall was cautious about the indiscriminate use of mathematics in economics. Consequently, in Marshall’s work the taxonomic tendencies did not manifest in an insistence on the deployment of formal mathematical methods but in his notions of which approaches were considered as the most appropriate scientific methods. Consequently, it is possible to be a taxonomic economist without deploying much mathematics. Indeed, in Veblen’s time many classical economists were not especially preoccupied with deploying mathematical methods.

2 On the implications of this view, see Samuels (1990); Hédoin (2010).

3 The ontological discrepancy thesis in the works of Marshall and John Neville Keynes is only briefly addressed by Veblen but has been well-substantiated by Pratten (2021) in Marshall’s case.

4 This is contrary to Lawson’s (2013) preferred strategy which is to abandon the term altogether.

5 On this point, see Sen (1987a) and Walsh (2000).

6 This is a bold statement. In other contributions (Sen 2004 and 2008), he considers the issue of the relevance of mathematics to economics in a more nuanced way. Even there though, his analysis is not at the level of ontology and does not consider the repercussions, regarding the viability of the mainstream project, stemming from the presuppositions of the methods employed in economics. Sen claims that the incorporation of a philosophical orientation is necessary in adding a layer of sophistication to mathematical methods but does not consider that a philosophical consideration of the ontological presuppositions of the methods could jeopardise the legitimacy of their use as an appropriate means of conducting research in the social sciences.

7 In the excerpt above, Sen characterizes general equilibrium theory as ‘abstract.’ As Lawson (1997, 227) shows, abstraction, understood as “focusing upon certain aspects of something to the (momentary) neglect of others,” is an indispensable method in science indeed. Nevertheless, mainstream economic theory does not rely on abstraction but on fictionalization (Lawson 1997, chap. 16) since essential features of the phenomena under study are entirely excluded (such as the interrelatedness of human agents) and replaced by invented and unrealistic presuppositions (such as atomism). Consequently, the “very narrow terms” in which humans are seen in such models are not abstract, as Sen claims above, but fictitious.

8 His identification and positive assessment of the “engineering” approach is reminiscent of Marshall’s “statical” approach which refers to the application of methods presupposing event regularities in economics (see Pratten 2021). Marshall adopts similar arguments to defend the practical usefulness of abstract “unrealistic” models while Sen’s use of the general equilibrium theory as an example of an abstract model with useful practical implications is almost identical to Marshall’s (1898) assessment of equilibrium theorizing as a device that can inform applied studies of tendencies in the equilibrium direction. As with Sen, Marshall claims that equilibrium theorizing, regardless of its dangers, should be maintained since it remains an essential stage that an appropriate, scientifically conducted, economics should pass through.

9 For more on this, see Martins (2018, 43).

10 Many thanks to one of the anonymous referees for bringing this to my attention. Moreover, as Sen himself notes (Sen, Deaton, and Besley 2020), he does not know anything about econometrics, so he is unable to see the problems with mainstream econometric analysis.

11 See Alkire (2002), Comim, Qizilbash and Alkire (2008), Deneulin (2009), Kuklys (2005), Robeyns (2005), or Walsh (2000; 2003; 2008).

12 See Martins (2006; 2007), Smith and Seward (2009), and Oosterlaken (2011). Recent contributions have noted, albeit briefly, Sen’s failure to provide an adequate treatment of ontology (Martins 2018, 42; Martins 2020, 412).

13 On informational focus, see Sen (1980).

14 Argued extensively by Martins (2006; 2007; 2014).

15 On a related note, Sen’s insistence on using mathematical methods is inconsistent not only with the methodology he found in the Cambridge tradition (Martins 2014) but also with the overall vision he initially had for the “Human Development” approach (a spin-off of the capabilities approach), which was inspired by a relational ontology (Martins 2022). In this regard, there are significant implications for the Human Development approach, which is concerned with indicators that aggregate various components (or subjective interests) rather than with how capabilities as causal powers interact in a relational structure (Martins 2020 and 2022; Smith and Seward 2009). Given the enormous influence of the human development and capabilities approaches, this is no small detail.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antonis Ragkousis

Antonis Ragkousis is the Joan Robinson Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge and Research Associate at the Centre for Business Research, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. The author thanks this journal’s editor and anonymous referees for their helpful comments in developing this article. The author is indebted to Stephen Pratten for his invaluable guidance and the countless hours he dedicated to reading multiple drafts of this article and making insightful suggestions. The author is also grateful to Yannick Slade-Caffarel and Tony Lawson for their detailed comments and to the Cambridge Social Ontology Group for their continuous support. The author would also like to thank the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation and King’s Business School for their financial support at the time of writing this article.