Economic Sciences

Biographical

I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts – not because my family had any connection with higher education, but because my father was a manager at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in a nearby town and Cambridge was the nearest hospital – in 1920. In the ensuing years we moved a number of times as a…

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Biographical

My grandparents on both sides immigrated to the United States from Sicily in the early 1900s, so I am a third generation Italian-American. The sec ond generation, my parents and aunts and uncles, were intelligent people, but they reached maturity at the start of the Great Depression, when there were few opportunities, so all worked…

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Biographical

My name sounds very Nordic. Seven of my great-great-grandparents were born in Denmark and two more in Sweden. My first name comes from my Swedish great-great-grandfather, Lars Toolson, whose son also had the first name Lars. My middle name is from my great-grandfather Peter Hansen, who was born in Denmark. Fifteen of my sixteen great-great-grandparents,…

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Biographical

In reflecting on my own life history on the occasion of the Nobel Prize, I find myself wondering about some traits of my research, about the kind of colleagues I have chosen to associate with in research, and why I even went into economics. I have used this occasion to think about the true origins…

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Biographical

I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another. My family is from Dhaka – now the capital of Bangladesh. My ancestral home in Wari in “old Dhaka” is not far from the University campus in Ramna. My father Ashutosh Sen taught chemistry at…

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Biographical

“Wake up, Robin”, a gentle hand shook my shoulder. “Let’s go.” It was so very early but I loved those mornings when my father would wake me and take me on an adventure. When I was a boy and we were camping, we would leave in the quiet morning hours to enjoy the lake together,…

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Biographical

Becoming an economist: From early preparation to my new directionFor decades, my research was driven by outstanding problems in macroeconomics: mainly growth theory and employment theory. Then, around 1990, my research turned to the study of economic systems and my development as an economist took on added dimensions. This biography will start with my student…

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