The enquiry into the causes of growth is motivated by the recognition that growth is a dominant condition for social and economic development in a country or region. In exploring the possible explanations for growth in South Asia over the second half of the twentieth century, this volume covers some significant dimensions of this process. It discusses growth in individual countries in the context of performance in other regions through cross-country analyses. The book presents a conventional decomposition of growth into factor accumulation and total factor productivity increase for the five major economies of the region—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. It also highlights the importance of a poverty-focus in economic reform strategies. The book goes on to describe the political economy of reforms and suggests policies in the context of India and Sri Lanka. It highlights the importance of understanding the political economy of issues in order to build a constituency of growth promoting policies. The role of output and factor markets in shaping the pace and composition of growth in the major South Asian economies is also examined. The essays analyse the functioning of labour markets and factors that influence the flexibility of labour allocation to trace the impact of human capital on growth. A substantive introduction explores the underlying themes and linkages on the basic premise that the recent economic reforms in South Asia have enhanced growth. An excellent source of economic information on South Asia, this book will be useful to policy-makers, researchers, and the general reader interested in growth theory and development.
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