Collected Papers in Theoretical Economics

The field of development economics has witnessed major changes over the last tow or three decades. From being a largely descriptive discipline, it has now become much more rigorous and theoretically well-founded. Kaushik Basu s work has played a significant role in this transformation of development economics, and the present book is a collection of his major papers in the field. Theoretical development is a difficult discipline because it entails the use of good economic theory but at the same time requires that the researcher keep a keen eye-an anthropologist s eye-on reality. This collection illustrates this method of research well as it ranges from commenting on contentious subjects, such as the design of policy to combat child labour, through the role of social norms in explaining why certain unwanted economic institutions persist, to how literacy ought to be measured.

Readership: Postgraduate students of economics, teachers, researchers, professional economists, policy-makers, economic journalists.

Kaushik Basu, Professor, Professor of Economics and C. Marks Professor, Department of economics and Director, Program on Comparative Economic Development, Cornell University

I. Introduction
Part I. Measuring Development
2. On the Goals of Development
3. On Measuring Literacy
4. The Greying of Populations: Concepts and Measurement
Part II. Institutions, Norms and Power
5. One Kind of Power
6. A Theory of Association: Social Status, Prices, and Markets
7. Civil Institutions and Evolution: Concepts, Critique and Models
Part III. Agrarian Organization
8. Technological Stagnation, Tenurial Laws and Adverse Selection
9. The Market for Land: An Analysis of Interim Transactions
10. Disneyland Monopoly, Interlinkage and Usurious Interest Rates
11. Fragmented Duopoly: Theory and Applications to Backward Agriculture
12. The Broth and the Cooks: A Theory of Surplus Labour
13. Limited Liability and the Existence of Share Tenancy
Part IV. International Labour Standards and Child Labour
14. Compacts, Conventions and Codes: Initiatives for Higher International Labour Standards
15. The Economics of Child Labour
16. A Note on Multiple General Equilibria w
ith Child Labour
17. On the Intriguing Relation between Adult Minimum Wage and Child Labour
18. Child Labour: Cause, Consequence, and Cure, with Remarks on International Labour