Kaushik Basu’s work has played a significant role in the transformation of development economics from being a largely descriptive, longwinded, and unstructured discipline, to a much more rigorous and theoretically well-founded one. The field of development economics has witnessed dramatic change over the past two or three decades. The subject, though still among the most challenging sub-disciplines of economics, has drawn on the benefits on the rise of game theoretic methods, strategic analysis, and the availability of new data-sets. It not only entails the use of good economic theory but also requires that the researcher keep an anthropologist’s eye on reality. This collection illustrates Basu’s method of research well as it comments on a range of contentious subjects, such as the design of policy to combat child labour, the role of social norms in explaining why certain unwanted economic institutions persist, and how literacy ought to be measured. Besides providing easy access for students of economics especially in developing countries — to the author’s major papers in the field of theoretical development — the book will be of immense interest to professional economists, policy-makers, and economic journalists.
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