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Development economics entail all the aspects of the development process especially meant for the developing countries to overcome the challenges that impede development. This can be through education, education and man power development, restructuring market incentives, incorporating favorable social and political approaches and practices among other factors. Human beings however need streamlined social and economic systems that are able to achieve development through major changes in social structures, national institutions, cultures and attitudes as well as eradication of poverty, reduction

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Dedication -- 1 Economic Development: Concept and Measurement -- 1.1 The Concept of Economic Development -- 1.2 Measurement of Economic Growth -- 1.3 The Distribution of Income and Poverty -- 1.4 International Income Comparisons -- 1.5 The Income Gap and Convergence -- 1.6 Composite Development Indicators -- Case Study 1: The Human Development Index: Kenya, Mexico and Canada -- Case Study 2: International Income Comparisons

"Understanding why so many people across the world are so poor is one of the central intellectual challenges of our time. What explains a pattern of extreme destitution for billions combined with plutocratic levels of income for a tiny minority? This book offers a novel approach to addressing those issues, not by providing answers, but seeking to provide the tools and data that will enable the student, the researcher and the professional working in this area to investigate the questions for themselves. Empirical Development Economics has been designed as a hands-on teaching tool to investigate the causes of poverty. The book begins by introducing the basics of the quantitative approach to development economics. All the topics are presented through data that addresses some important policy issue. In Part 1 the focus is on the basics of understanding why incomes differ so much. What is the role of education, technology and institutions in ensuring that where you are born is so important in determining whether you are poor? In Part 2 the focus is on techniques that allow us to address questions which include how firms invest, how households decide how much to spend on education of their children, whether microfinance does help the poor, whether food aid works, who gets private schooling and whether property rights enhance investment.A distinctive feature of the book is its presentation of a range of approaches to studying development questions. Development economics has undergone a major change in focus over the last decade with the rise of experimental methods to address development issues. One of our objectives has been to show how such methods relate to more traditional ones. "--

This dissertation consists of four studies covering both micro and macro perspectives of development economics using theory and empirics. This thesis predominantly focuses on problems of economic development and considers policy directions to mitigate such problems. Chapter 2 develops a model of rural-urban seasonal migration with special reference to lean period shocks. Agricultural lean periods occur in rural areas due to natural disasters or agricultural downturns. This study shows that as the probability of a lean period increases, overall seasonal migration decreases but the proportion of agricultural workers undertaking seasonal migration increases. Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between access to micro-credit and temporary seasonal migration. Using primary data from Bangladesh, this study quantifies the factors that influence such migration decisions. Seasonal migration is a natural choice in a lean period, however due to strict loan repayment rules, those who have prior access to micro-credit have no such option. The study finds that that there is no significant difference in income in a lean period between those who have access to micro-credit and those who do not. Chapter 4 focuses on the determinants of government expenditure in developing countries. This study finds evidence that political and institutional variables, as well as governance variables, have considerable association with government expenditure. Among other results, corruption is found to be influential whereas, by contrast, size of the economy and linguistic fractionalization are found to have sizable negative impact on government expenditure. The study finds evidence that public expenditure significantly shrinks under military dictatorship. Chapter 5 studies the spending and absorption of aid in Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), an IMF supported aid program. The study further verifies whether the use of aid is programmed to be smoothed over time, and analyses how considerations about macroeconomic stability ...

Selection of papers presented at the Fifth and Sixth Annual Conferences on "Contemporary Issues in Development Economics," held at and organized by Dept. of Economics, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, in September 1995 and December 1996

The relationship between democracy and inequality and the role of democratic participation in fostering redistribution has been a critical question of interest to economists over time. My dissertation focuses on a key aspect of democratic participation - the ability of citizens to form political parties and contest elections - and empirically identifies the relationship between the distribution of political power, and the distribution of public resources. To this effect, I study the economic impacts emanating from the political mobilization of historically underprivileged and socio-economically disadvantaged citizen groups in India - the low caste and indigenous communities - which has occurred over the past three decades. While comprising over half the nation's population, citizens from these groups have faced institutionalized discrimination through the hierarchical caste system, severely restricting their access to education, public institutions and basic services. This process of political mobilization by low caste citizens resulted in the formation of powerful caste-based political parties which contested elections in an attempt to capture political power through the democratic process, and subsequently, use their nascent state power to redirect public resources to their communities. The core chapters of this dissertation empirically document the economic and social impacts emanating from this change in the distribution of political power through democratic processes, resulting in the political empowerment of marginalized citizen groups. The first chapter of my dissertation identifies the economic impacts of this process of political mobilization. Using the outcome of close elections between parties exclusively representing low caste interests and other mainstream parties as the source of exogenous variation, the paper shows that the marginal legislator from low caste parties increases the share of state expenditures allocated towards targeted and untargeted welfare schemes benefitting low caste citizens by 2 and 1 percent. In a departure from existing studies in the literature which have exploited the system of mandated representation of low caste politicians in India, my paper shows that the mandated representation of low caste politicians has no impact on welfare transfers for low caste citizens when unaccompanied by a strong ex-ante party commitment in favour of low caste welfare. This paper also highlights the trade-offs emanating from the redistributive spending choices of fiscally constrained legislators by identifying the negative impact of the marginal legislator from low caste parties on public investments in road construction and electricity generation. Using tests of heterogeneity, the paper argues that the redistributive spending preferences of legislators from low caste parties is one of the mechanisms explaining the negative causal impact between the electoral success of these parties and regional inflows of private investment. Low caste citizens in India have often been victims of targeted violence by social elites in an attempt to preserve the existing social hierarchy and consolidate economic rents. This forms the motivation for the second chapter of my dissertation, identifying the causal impact of low caste parties on the incidence of targeted crimes against low caste citizens. The empirical results from this paper show that the marginal legislator from low caste parties reduces the incidence of violent crimes against low caste citizens by 4-14 percent and contribute significantly to the protection of civil rights. The paper also identifies the mechanisms explaining the reduced form impact - first, through higher rates of arrest, prosecution and diligence with which law enforcement agencies pursue such cases of targeted violence; second, through changes in the attitudes of low-caste citizens towards state institutions which affect the enforcement of criminal law.Finally, the third chapter of my dissertation focuses on a major question of interest in the field of development economics and economic growth - the role of agricultural growth in the process of structural transformation. Using data from a panel of 273 Indian districts over a twenty-five year period and rainfall shocks as an instrument for agricultural growth, I present causal evidence that rainfall-induced agricultural growth has a significant impact on the structural transformation process by increasing the share of rural workers employed in the manufacturing sector. My results show that the non-farm employment gains from higher agricultural growth is concentrated amongst unskilled workers with relatively low levels of education, signalling the poverty alleviating aspect of agricultural growth. By studying the differential impact of agricultural productivity across regions with initially low levels of agricultural productivity and urbanization, I also document the potential of agricultural growth to facilitate convergence across regions in terms of rural employment diversification.