Agency, Gender and Economic Development in the World Economy 1850–2000

How has ‘agency’ – or the ability to define and act upon one’s goals - contributed to global long-term economic development during the last 150 years? This book asserts that autonomous decision making, and female agency in particular, increases the potential of a society to generate economic growth and improve its institutions. Inspired by Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach and looking at this in comparison to contemporary economic theory, the collection of chapters tackle the issue of agency from the micro level of household and family formation and ask how this applies to gender at regional and state level.