Choice of Techniques: An Aspect of the Theory of Planned Economic Development.

SEN, Amartya Kumar.

$2,000.00

Item Number: 115214

Oxford: Basil Blackford, 1960.

First edition of the Nobel Prize-winning economist’s dissertation. Octavo, original boards. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the title page, “Francis Bator with regards, Amartya Sen.” The recipient, Francis M. Bator was Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States from 1965 to 1967. He was also a Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Bator was Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy in Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where he was founding chairman of the School’s Public Policy Program, and director of studies in its Institute of Politics. Before coming to Harvard in 1967 he served as deputy national security advisor to President Lyndon Johnson covering U.S.-European relations and foreign economic policy. On the occasion of his departure from the White House, The Economist of London headed an article about his service “Europe’s Assistant.” Bator’s 1958 article “The Anatomy of Market Failure,” was recently described as “the standard reference” to the “approach [that] now forms the basis of …textbook expositions in the economics of the public sector.” His 1960 book, The Question of Government Spending, was described in the Economic Journal “as a model of the sort of contribution which the economist can make to informed public discussion” and in the New York Times as one of seven books that influenced President Kennedy’s approach to the presidency. In near fine condition.

Amartya Sen has been awarded over an astonishing ninety honorary degrees and more than fifteen awards, including the Nobel Prize in Economics (1998), the Bharat Ratna (1999), and the National Humanities Medal (2012) for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory. Choice of Techniques is Sen's first publication and is, thus, representative of the beginning of an illustrious career.