ECONOMIC POLICY AND STATE INTERVENTION:
Selected Papers of T.N. Srinivasan

Edited by N.S.S. Narayana
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001

Contents

  1. Investment criteria and choice of techniques of production
  2. Optimal savings in a two-sector model of growth
  3. Optimal intervention to achieve non-economic objectives
  4. On the choice between capital and labour mobility
  5. Quid Pro Quo Foreign Investment and Welfare: A political-economy-theoretic model
  6. Comment on ‘Two strategies for economic development: Using ideas and producing ideas’ by Romer
  7. Why developing countries should participate in the GATT system
  8. Post-Uruguay Round issues for Asian Developing countries
  9. Indian economic reforms: Background, rationale, achievements, and future prospects
  10. India’s development strategy, privatization, and deregulation
  11. Income distribution and the macroeconomy: some conceptual and measurement issues
  12. Database for development analysis: An overview
  13. Hunger: defining it, estimating its global incidence, and alleviating it
  14. Destitution: a discourse
  15. Agricultural backwardness under semi feudalism: Comment
  16. Rationing, spillover, and interlinking in credit markets: The case of rural Punjab
  17. Dynamics of endogenous growth
  18. Development in the context of rapid population growth: An overall assessment
  19. Nuclear power and economic development: India
  20. Neoclassical political economy, the state and economic development
  21. Democracy, markets and development. Annexe: In conversation with T.N. Srinivasan.

Introduction

This volume is a collection of writings by T.N. Srinivasan — one of the most eminent Indian economists. Professor Srinivasan’s numerous writings cover a wide range of issues concerning developing countries. This selection includes some of his classic theoretical writings as well as his views on practical economic policies, ranging from optimizing policies of rational individuals to the role of a state within the systems of economic structure.

The initial papers discuss long run issues dealt with in optimal growth models. The subsequent discussion on trade and foreign investment focuses on problems faced by developing countries. India’s economic problems, both internal and external, are examined in this context. The several issues addressed are related to the concept and measurement of income, growth, population, redistribution, production relations in agriculture, and economic structures, as well as India as a nuclear power, the role of the state and the relationship between democracy and the market.

This collection not only reflects Professor Srinivasan’s wide range of interests, but his belief that economics should have the serious purpose of influencing policy. It will greatly interest policy-makers in India and other developing countries and will be a valuable book for students and researchers in economics.

T.N. Srinivasan is Samuel C. Park Jr. Professor of Economics and former Chairman, Department of Economics, Yale University, USA.

Excerpts from Reviews

"...a rich collection of diverse ideas of considerable policy import of an economist whose brilliance has been well-acknowledged the world over."
     — Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics

"This book puts together a selected yet remarkably diverse collection of T.N. Srinivasan's writings, providing insight into a significant range of issues...a rewarding journey with considerable food for thought based on analysis and logic, not coloured by self-interest or politics."
     — Indian Review of Books