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.