Development in India: Micro and Macro Perspectives

This book examines various facets of the development process such as aid, poverty, caste networks, corruption, and judicial activism. It explores the efficiency of and distributional issues related to agriculture, and the roles of macro models and financial markets, with a special emphasis on bubbles, liquidity traps and experimental markets. The importance of finite changes in trade and development, as well as that of information technology and issues related to energy and ecosystems, including sustainability and vulnerability, are analyzed.

The book presents papers that were commissioned for the Silver Jubilee celebrations at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR). The individual contributions address related development problems, ensuring a homogeneous reading experience and providing a thorough synthesis and understanding of the authors’ research areas. The reader will be introduced to various aspects of development thought by leading and contemporary researchers. As such, the book represents an important addition to the literature on economic thought by leading scholars, and will be of great value to graduate students and researchers in the fields of development studies, political economy and economics in general.

S. Mahendra Dev is Director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, India. After obtaining his Ph.D. from Delhi School of Economics (New Delhi, India), he did his post-doctoral research at Yale University, USA. He is also the Chair of the Committee on Terms of Trade on Agriculture constituted by the Indian Ministry of Agriculture. He previously chaired the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices at the Ministry of Agriculture, and served as Director of the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS) in Hyderabad. His research interests include Development economics, Indian economy, Macro policies, Inclusive growth, Agricultural policies, Poverty and inequality and Rural development.

P G Babu is Professor at IGIDR, Mumbai coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus European Graduate Programs in Law and Economics, and Managing Editor of Journal of Quantitative Economics, official journal of The Indian Econometric Society (TIES) published by Springer. He has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Aix-Marseille, Bayreuth (as Adam Smith Chair Guest Professor of Philosophy and Economics), Hamburg, IIM Ahmedabad, Madras School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Warsaw School of Economics. He obtained his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. His research interests include Microeconomics and Game Theory with interdisciplinary applications to environment, law, philosophy and politics.

About Contributors:

Dilip Abreu, Princeton University, Princeton, USA

Dilip R. Ahuja, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

P. Binswanger-Mkhize , China Agricultural University

Arka Roy Chaudhuri, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Avinash K. Dixit, Princeton University, Princeton, USA

Probal P. Ghosh, IRADe, Delhi, India

Priyank Jindal, IRADe, Delhi, India

Ravi Kanbur, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA

Ashok Kotwal, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

SugatoMarjit, CSSS, Kolkata, India

Anil Markandya, University of Bath, Bath, UK; Basque Centre for Climate Change, Bilbao, Spain

KaivanMunshi, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

MilindMurugkar, PragatiAbhiyan, Nasik, India

Jyoti K. Parikh, IRADe, Delhi, India

Kirit S. Parikh, IRADe, Delhi, India

MihirRakshit, ICRA, Kolkata, India

Bharat Ramaswami, Indian Statistical Institute Delhi, New Delhi, India

Geeta Sandal, IRADe, New Delhi, India

Nirvikar Singh, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

T.N. Srinivasan, Yale University, New Haven, USA

Marti G. Subrahmanyam, New York University, New York, USA

Shyam Sunder, Yale University, New Haven, USA

Dragon Yongjun Tang, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Sarah Qian Wang, University of Warwick, UK