IMF [to 7 June 2014]
http://www.imf.org/external/index.htm

Empowerment—the Amartya Sen Lecture
By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
London, June 6, 2014
Excerpt
Good evening. What an immense pleasure to come to this intellectual powerhouse to honor one of the greatest intellectuals of our time. Let me especially thank Professor Craig Calhoun for his kind introduction—I know that Professor Calhoun is a great leader in his field, and a great leader of the LSE.
The LSE is one of the world’s most prestigious universities. Its alumni include 34 world leaders and 16 Nobel Prize winners.
One of these Nobel Prize winners is, of course, the luminous Amartya Sen. There are few economists today who can match his reach—from the complex mathematics of social choice to the lofty speculation of moral philosophy; combining deep theoretical rigor with a heartfelt concern for the poor and the marginalized.
Amartya Sen has always understood that the concerns of economics are closely related to the concerns of justice and fairness. In that, he follows in the footsteps of the great economic thinkers of the past.
Today, especially in the wake of the global crisis, members of the profession are asking the kinds of questions that Amartya has spent his whole life pondering. His was a prophetic voice, and he can rightfully be called the conscience of economics.
Tonight, the topic I want to talk about sits at the intersection of justice and economics—the issue of empowerment. Empowerment is about economic opportunity, the ability to freely choose one’s own path in life in accordance with one’s distinctive talents and abilities. It is about cutting away obstacles to true human flourishing.
I want to address three distinct layers of empowerment:
:: First, the empowerment of the individual—and what that means for economic policies.
:: Second, what is needed to help individual empowerment—the empowerment of institutions.
:: Third, what is needed in turn to help national economies flourish—the empowerment of multilateralism….