Meghnad Desai

Human development: Concepts and measurement

Abstract The Human Development Report (HDR) of the UNDP argues for a new approach to the definition, measurement and achievement of development. This paper traces the intellectual origins of the HDR in the recent literature on poverty, entitlements and capability. The paper also deals in particular with the Human Development Index (HDI) and explains its rationale and its future revisions.

Growth cycles and inflation in a model of the class struggle

Abstract The problems of price and wage inflation and unemployment are discussed here in a context of a model of class struggle developed by R. M. Goodwin. The basic Goodwin model which is an analog of the Volterra-Lotka preypredator model is extended to include actual and anticipated price inflation and excess capacity. Cyclical behavior of labors share in national income and the employment ratio is studied around a Harrodian steady state. It is found that the presence of money illusion with respect to the actual rate of inflation in the wage bargaining equation is a stabilizing influence. With respect to anticipated inflation, local stability of equilibrium is no longer assured. The implications of this for Phillips curve analysis are also derived.

Measuring the Technology Achievement of Nations and the Capacity to Participate in the Network Age

The technological transformations of the past decade and the emergence of the global marketplace have raised the stakes for all countries to become technologically connected-to be able to create, adapt and use global technological innovations. Yet the challenges of competing in the technology-based global marketplace and of harnessing technology as a tool for human development are very different across countries, which vary greatly in their technological capacity and needs. This paper presents a measurement approach to assess the technological achievements of a country, as an aid to policy-makers in identifying policy priorities. It sets out the rationale for and uses of the Technology Achievement Index (TAI), and composite measure of technological progress that ranks countries on a comparative global scale.

Lectures on advanced econometric theory

Foundations of asymptotic theory simultaneous equation models (SEM) identification and the treatment of general linear restrictions estimation of single equation models 1 - OLS and GLS estimators estimation of single models 2 - the instrumental variable & 2SLS estimator the IV estimation of a set of simultaneous equations maximum likelihood estimation A - full information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation B - limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimation testing equations for misspecification alternative significance tests methods of numerical optimization.

Growth Cycles with Induced Technical Change

This paper concerns itself with two related topics: the relative shares of workers and capitalists in the national income and the labour augmenting bias of technical change. Both have been dealt with, in contrasting fashion, in two seminal papers on distribution theory. Kennedy (I964) attempts to explain the then observed constancy of relative shares with the help of the now famous invention possibility frontier. However, the wage and profit rates are exogeneous to his model. Goodwin (I967), on the other hand, presents a model of cycles in growth rates in which the share of labour, the wage rate and the profit rate are endogenously determined. However, unlike the Kennedy analysis, technical change is assumed to be constant and exogeneously given. Given that these pioneering works have addressed themselves to important questions, it seems a worthwhile task to build a model in which the shares of labour and capital, the wage rate, the profit rate, and technical change are all endogenously determined. The perspective we have chosen here introduces the key element of Kennedys perception, induced technical change, into the Goodwin scheme and the consequences of so doing are traced out in the following terse account. There are two classes in the economy, workers and capitalists. Only one good q(t) is produced and it can be either consumed or invested. Capital stock k(t) is homogeneous and, for simplicity, also assumed to be non-depreciating. The capital-output ratio at time t is denoted by o(t). Labour, I(t) is also homogeneous and its productivity at time t, a(t) = q(t)/l(t), improves at the rate ac(t). Labours share in the national income denoted by u(t) is

The Growth of Large-Scale Industry to 1947

Industrial development in India has been part of the very broad movement which had its origins in Western Europe. This chapter describes the growth of Indias modern industries, the forms within which they developed and the character of the labour force that emerged. During the first half of the nineteenth century the industrialization process was taking deep hold in Britain and in other parts of the North Atlantic region but in India the new technology and novel processes had only a trifling impact. Most of what was introduced came as a product of official concern, civilian and military. The history of large-scale private factory enterprise between 1850 and the First World War is associated almost entirely with developments in three industries such as jute, cotton, and iron and steel industries. The development of the three industries reveals a great deal about the complexity of economic response on the sub-continent.

Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments (1757–1947)

This chapter first outlines the institutional changes relating to trade, which followed from the change of government in 1757, and then examines those particular features of Indian overseas trade which distinguish it from later development. The trends and fluctuations in Indias overall foreign trade can be classified into two main components: changes, both relative and absolute, in the demand for commodities, and those relating to the geographical distribution of trade. The chapter argues that the changes in the commodity composition of Indian exports were the induced effects of factors operating through demand. Perhaps no other subject connected with Indias international economy has generated so much controversy as the commercial and tariff policy pursued first by the East India Company and then the Indian administration under the Crown. The chapter discusses the mechanism which kept Indias balance of payments and foreign exchange rates in equilibrium, given the unilateral transfers.

An Econometric Model of the Share of Wages in National Income: UK 1855–1965

Earlier versions of the paper were presented to the World Congress of the Econometric Society at Toronto (1975) and to the AUFE meeting at Exeter (1979) as well as At seminars in Cambridge, Southampton and Leeds. I am grateful to David Blake for much research help, to Stephen Glaister, Steve Nickell and Malcolm Pemberton for clarification on questions of theory. This research was supported over its long gestation period by the UK SSRC in a series of programmes to the LSE econometrics group — SEPDEM (1973–1976) PQE (1976–1979) MIME (1979–1982) and DEMEIC (1982–1985).

Rice and fish: Asymmetric preferences and entitlement failures in food growing economics with non-food producers

Abstract An entitlement approach to understanding famines has been proposed by Amartya Sen. This paper seeks to provide two analytical 2 × 2 general equilibrium models which display sufficient conditions for famine situations to occur without invoking market failure. The conditions are that preferences as between the two goods be asymmetric and that there be complete specialisation in endowments/production. Under these conditions, prices fail to play an allocative function despite absence of market failure.

Globalisation: Neither ideology nor utopia

This article calls for a different perspective on globalisation than hitherto deployed in the literature, and argues that globalisation must be seen as a renewal of the 19” century phase of capitalism. It traces the history of capitalism, and places globalisation in the context of a history of ideas as well as events. It contrasts two philosophies of social dynamics ‐ the mechanistic and the organicist ‐ proposing that the organicist view is the philosophy suited to the current phase of capitalism ‐ globalisation. Based on this analysis, the article sees capitalism as a self‐organising system rather than a conspiracy of the powerful, and it follows that good and bad aspects of globalisation are dialectically intertwined. It is neither an ideology ‐ a neo‐liberal ideology as some have claimed ‐ alone, nor a Utopia as its champions have claimed.