In Good Company: About Agency and Economic Development in Global Perspective

Jan Luiten van Zanden

Economic History of Developing Regions, 2012, vol. 27, issue S1, S16-S27

Abstract: The paper discusses some evidence, based on a review of new literature on economic history, about what is coined the Sen-hypothesis, that increasing human agency (of both men and women) is a key factor in economic development. It briefly discusses various dimensions of agency (or its absence): slavery (as the absolute suppression of human agency), access to markets, agency concerning marriage, and political participation. This concept perhaps also allows economic historians to move beyond the historical determinism that is central to much recent work in this field.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/20780389.2012.657456 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: In Good Company: About Agency and Economic Development in Global Perspective (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rehdxx:v:27:y:2012:i:s1:p:s16-s27

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rehd20

DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2012.657456

Access Statistics for this article

Economic History of Developing Regions is currently edited by Alex Klein and Alfonso Herranz-Loncan

More articles in Economic History of Developing Regions from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().