Description
Book SynopsisMeghnad Desai's work presents a significant challenge to economics as currently practised.
Poverty, Famine and Economic Development brings together essays which reflect his long-standing interest in economic development.
Issues discussed include econometric testing of the disguised unemployment hypothesis, theoretical and applied approaches to famine, poverty in rich as well as poor countries, poverty in Latin America and state involvement in economic development. The volume also includes a discussion of the essay by Lenin which was the basis of the 'New Economic Policy', the first attempt at Market Socialism in the Soviet Union.
The volume also includes a substantial autobiographical preface, in which Lord Desai explains how he became an economist and the influences behind the development of his thought, as well as a specific introduction explaining how he came to produce the papers included in this volume.
Trade Review'. . . a useful reference for those involved in teaching and researching poverty and famine.' -- J. G. Copestake, Economic Journal
Table of ContentsA test of the hypothesis of disguised unemployment; an econometric approach to the measurement of poverty; the role of exchange and market relationships in the economics of the transition period - Lenin on the tax in kind; economic alternatives for labour; the economics of famine; drawing the line - on defining the poverty threshold; storytelling and formalism in economics - the instance of famine; rice and fish - assymetric preferences and entitlement failures in food growing economics with non-food producers; homilies of a Victorian sage - a review article on Peter Bauer; is state control necessary for economic development in the third world; a generla theory of poverty? - a review article; consumption and pollution; poverty and capability - towards an empirically implementable measure; methodological problems in the measurement of poverty in Latin America.
