The Collected Works of A.K. Dasgupta: Essays in Economic Theory (Volume II)

Foremost among the founders of modern economics in India, A.K. Dasgupta (1903-92) is considered a pioneer in theoretical economics. The essays in this volume–one of three self contained companion volumes–not only display his preeminence among the Indian economists of his generation, but also make a substantial theoretical contribution to the history of economic ideas in India. Dasgupta’s motivation came from his observations of the world around him, in particular of events unfolding in the Indian economy in the post-independence era. Essays in Economic Theory, written over a period of nearly sixty years, highlights both Dasgupta’s commitment to economic theory and the expertise with which he pushed its frontiers. The essays are wide ranging and cover value and prices (including the theory of wages and interest), economic competition, growth and capital theory, economic methodology, and the history of political economy. The volume also contains the author’s pioneering work on wages and employment in economies with an unlimited supply of labour and his magisterial presidential lecture at the Indian Economic Association in 1960. Above all, they are the definitive intellectual testimony of one of India’s greatest social thinkers of power and probity. In his illuminating introduction to the volume, Partha Dasgupta, the author’s son and a renowned theoretician himself, writers about the author’s originality and his concern with the practical application of his theoretical research. He also discusses the influence of welfare economists on A.K. Dasgupta that led him to adopt a broadly utilitarian view of social life.