India’s Nobel laureate and leading economist Amartya Sen will advice French President Nicolas Sarkozy on changes in the way French growth is calculated to include quality-of-life factors.

Sarkozy said on Tuesday that he had recruited Sen and another Nobel economist for the purpose.
At his first press conference since being elected in May on a platform to reform and free up the economy, he said Mr Sen had agreed to give advice and that US economist Joseph Stiglitz had agreed to chair a committee of experts.

Sarkozy said “we must change the way we measure growth” and argued that thought had to be given to the way gross national product was calculated to take account of the quality of life in France.

New indices would improve the impression of growth performance among French people “who can no longer accept the growing gap between statistics that show continuing progress (in growth) and the increasing difficulties they face in their daily lives.”

Sarkozy said he had asked the two Nobel prize winners, “who have done a lot of work on these questions,” to lead the analysis.