Economics

In general, agency considered as the relationship between principal (Investor) and an agent. The idea of agency has become a source of increasing a confusion and strain in social thought. So many theories, Variants of action theory, normative theory and political analysis have defined brought around the concept in often conflicting and overlapping ways. As a result of the converse of the term agency keep up itself an elusive, albeit significant, ambiguity. It has all very hardly inspired analysis in spite of the terms with which has been related Personality, motivation, purposive ness, choice, inventiveness, freedom, and creativity (Emir Bayer and Mische 2010, pp. 962-1023). People want freedom to make their choices about their lives. In sometimes, it is important than accomplish the needs which the agency or the ability to set and follow ones own goals and interests.

 In other words, the agency defined as obviously plural in both concept and measurement. Amartya sens capability and approach views agency is an assessment of what a person can do in line with his or her conception of the good (Sen 1985b, p.206).

According to Sen, for development and poverty reduction activities to promote agency, the people have to be seen as being actively involved- given the opportunity  in shaping their own destiny, and not just as passive recipients of the fruits of cunning development programs (Basu and Kanbur 2008, pp962-1023).

Measures of Agency
Sens account of agency explains different and plural features that are relevant measures to agency
Agency is exercised with respect to goals the person values
Agency includes effective power as well as direct control
Agency may advance wellbeing or may address other regarding             goals
To identify agency also entails an assessment of the value of the agents goals
The agents responsibility for a state of affairs should be incorporated into his or her evaluation of it.
The first one, Agency is exercised with respect to goals and the person values. It implicates the agency exercised with multiple aims certainly it cannot be defined with out the subject of goals. The agency goals with respect to every one may be various with their goals, and the goal includes the affectionate family relationships. So the goal must be a more inspiring reading group.

Second, agency may include effective power with control. Effective power is the power to achieve the goals of the person or groups. Simply the effective power means how the choices are made and implement. Sen describes effective power exercised in line with what we would have chosen and because of it (Sen 1985b, p.211).

Third, Agency may comfort and may deal with other goals. However the agency and well being perspectives stay behind distinct. Agency have not only advance well being aspects, it may be other regarding. The distinction is sharply clear in the situations of which acting as an agent may reduce other aspects of well being. Agency has open conditionality in the sense that is any type of aim, but advances any goals which the person thinks it is important for themselves and their community.

Fourth, by definition the agency associated to goals that the person values. In addition, the recognition of agency involves some assessment of those goals. The open conditionally view of agency does not imply. That anything that appeals to a person must, for that reason, come into the accounting of his agency freedom. The need for careful assessment of aims, allegiances, objectives, etc., and of the conception of the good, may be important and exacting. (Sen 1985b, p.204).

Fifth, the agents responsibility for a state of affairs and his or her subsequent response to it, will include, if relevant, an assessment of person responsibility in brining about that situation. (Sen 1983 Sen 1985b). This fifth characteristic seems do not appropriate to agency, but a state of affairs which include a persons role in creating it and thus should convey responsibility.

Concrete measures are needed to explore such aspects of agency in many different settings (Alkire 2006). First we analyze the proxy measures of agency, but it is not a sufficient measure to agency. There are four measures according to their relationship in Sens concept of agency.

These are
i) Agency as global or multidimensional
Agency as direct control and effective power
Agency as advancing wellbeing freedom or other commitments
        iv)  Agency as autonomy or ability.
Proxy Measures of Agency

By measuring the presence or absence of pre-requisites, it is perceptible to identify the agency and poverty. The common proxy measures of agency are literacy, Schooling, frequency of radioTV listening, membership in organizations, employment status, health status, land ownership, food expenditure (Alsop  Heinsohn 2005). The analysis of these measures are differ, not the data. For example, we see Alsop  Heinsohns (2005) masterful review of the literature, literacy and level of income was used to reflect agency in Ethiopia, Nepal and Honduras countries studies reports. Redundancy of agency and poverty indicators exclude meaningful experimental study of the connections between agency and poverty. Hence to clarify the prominent role of agency in poverty reduction the empirical analyses are important. Individual indicators are required for poverty and agency.

However, such measures represent complex concepts the primary appeal of those measures are concrete and tangible.  We examine an illustration of the measurement of shame.  A man cannot go out without shame, if he be short of a linen shirt and leather shoes. By this example, we understood any self respecting analyst of shame would immediately set about to measure the tenure of linen and leather. So there are number of problems by using of assets proxy measures of agency. First, assets may not interpret into agency and in the same way for different individuals. This problem is corresponding to the issues with assets as sufficient indicators of functioning and happens because of human diversity. Like this many proxy measures are actually identical to measure poverty, such as years of schooling, employment status or asset ownership or health status.

Thus three problems arise by the use of proxy measure as agency measures. First, the translation of assets to agency is implicit to assume consistently. Second, agency expansions caused by a different trigger may be raised.  Third, explore the connections between agency and poverty is not possible by using of same indicators to characterize both phenomena.

Global and multidimensional
Some measures of agency are global in the sense that a single indicator, for example parents education. Even though the levels of agency are differ, the permeable boundaries between kinds of agency for the exercise of agency in different domains, yet if they have common skills. Scrutiny of the evidence, however, has called into question such hypothesis, so unless different analyses come forward, separate measures for different dimensions of agency should increase global measures. In Practice the domains that have been selected represent either a) the persons different kinds of goals or the role played by the person, or b) potentially coercive forces that could obstruct agency. The theoretical plurality of agency raises the preference of multidimensional measures of agency in measurement. The global and multidimensional measures to agency might need to be justified by empirical characteristics of the data.

Direct control and Effective power
A large focus upon agency by the current indicators of agency is direct control, and rather less clearly on agency as effective power. Agency is defined as an actors or groups ability to make purposeful choices  that is, the actor is able to envisage and purposively choose options (Alsop et al.2006 p.11). The persons direct action (choice-making) is the only exemplify characteristic of agency.

One limitation of control measures is that the people do not convey whether the lack of control (decision making) is favored by the respondent people may prefer not to be concerned with certain decisions but assign them to others. Another limitation of control measures is that they dont convey whether the actions are successful in terms of the agency goals. The measurement of effective power is clearly more challenging than direct control. External Capabilities written by Foster and Handy classifies similar issue and their measurement of external capabilities would be probably equivalent to effective power.

Advancing well-being freedom or Other Commitments
The all measures of agency reflect direct or indirect goals of agency and the   persons own well-being freedom. Narayan and Petesch write that Agency is about peoples ability to act individually or collectively to further their own interests (Narayan  Petesch 2007, p.15). The thought of other-regarding agency is intricate than simple measurements, it may require analyses by compared other measures. Some times people not snatch their potential effective power by themselves and such failures to notice may stimulate functioning.  Further If the people do have such power to effect change for others well-being, they may be encouraged to consider their imperfect obligation to use such power on behalf of others (Anand  Sen 2000).

Autonomy or Ability
Sen explains, the agency can never be detained and based on observation it is a single indicator because the term itself has another meaning. Agency is a persons ability to act on behalf of things they value and have reason to value. So there are two different aspects of agency
Autonomy  whether people are able to act on behalf of what they themselves value (it matters not whether the respondent has reason to value them)

Ability  whether people are able to act on behalf of things that they are assumed to have reason to value (whether or not the respondent actually values them)

Autonomy investigates the persons own understanding capacity of their situation and Ability examines the objective powers of a person enjoys or uses. In some cases People determine value on based upon their own reasons to value and people have the essential skills to use their autonomy.  So we can say autonomy and ability will coincide. Autonomy presents ability and ability presents autonomy and the both will present agency. People may have certain capabilities, but intimidate to use the abilities. In these cases the ability and autonomy were deviate (Alkira).

Conclusion
Agency is exercised with respect to goals and the person values. Proxy measures of agency used assets to measure the persons values and poverty. It is not possible to measure exactly by the proxy measures. Sen describes four measures to agency. These measures are 1) Global or multidimensional 2) Effective power and direct control 3) Advancing well-being freedom 4) Autonomy and Ability. Douglass claimed that, A persons greatness consists in his ability to do, and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.  The development of different measures of individual agency may be useful to support the kinds of agency.