…le’s lives are made, which includes many empirical disciplines, and of course also ethics and social and political philosophy. Tony Atkinson Former Professor of Economics, University of Oxford, UK In economics, my field, theoretical models play an important role in influencing how problems are conceived. The models are typically over-simplified, but they serve to highlight relationships that may otherwise be overlooked or given insufficient weight…

…ividuals and in groups.’ The HD paradigm draws, among others, on the conceptu*]}*al works of Amartya Sen, and what came to be known as the Capability Approach (CA). The CA is ‘a moral approach that sees persons from two different perspectives: wellbeing and agency’ (Sen 1985, p.169). People pursue wellbeing in that they seek to “function” well as human beings. ‘Functionings’ are sets of doings such as eating, reading or taking part in social and polit…