Essays on Incomplete Information in Economic Development

Essays on Incomplete Information in Economic Development
Author: Jennifer Lynn Steele
Publisher:
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2007
Genre: Contracts
ISBN:

This thesis studies the effects of incomplete information on economic development. Relaxing the assumption that information is complete allows for corruption to occur, even in equilibrium, and for poverty traps to develop. The first paper looks at how the lack of enforcement mechanisms affects contracts, and how a more efficient contracting mechanism can be developed in aid settings. I find that as the level of corruption increases, the contract will encompass more stages. In the second paper, the agent's level of corruption is unknown, and the principal may screen agents by including corruption with positive probability. This would account for the corruption seen in development projects as an equilibrium effect. The third paper looks at the effect of uncertainty about foreign productivity on a firm's foreign direct investment (FDI) decision. Dependent on the form of the information, this may result in either an underinvestment of FDI, or no FDI at all.

Economics and Human Welfare

Economics and Human Welfare
Author: Michael J. Boskin
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2014-05-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 148326100X

Economic Theory, Econometrics, and Mathematical Economics: Economics and Human Welfare: Essays in Honor of Tibor Scitovsky focuses on the principles, influence, and contributions of Tibor Scitovsky on economics. The selection first elaborates on welfare economics and microeconomic theory, property rights doctrine and demand revelation under incomplete information, and experiments in the pricing of theater tickets. Discussions focus on the effect on audience composition, volume, and revenues, failure of bargaining under privacy, growing disenchantment with economic growth, and bargaining as a game of incomplete information. The text then takes a look at economics and the transformation of the idea of progress and changes in the size distribution of income. The text ponders on welfare criteria, distribution, and cost- benefit analysis; position of ethics in the theory of production; and rationing and price as methods of restricting demand for specific products. Topics include excise taxation with revenue distributed like rations; private and social returns to morality; effect of changes in the cost of organization and communication; and logical and historical foundation of the theory of the welfare state. The selection is highly recommended for economists and researchers interested in pursuing studies on the relationship of economics and human welfare.

Growth, Productivity, Unemployment

Growth, Productivity, Unemployment
Author: Robert M. Solow
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 1990
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780262041102

The essays in this book extend and elaborate on many of the important ideas Solow has either originated or developed in the past three decades.

Selected Essays on Economic Planning

Selected Essays on Economic Planning
Author: Michal Kalecki
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2011-02-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521179713

This 1987 book brings together the series of papers Kalecki wrote, between 1940 and his death in 1970, on economic planning, that contain the germ of his theory of growth in a socialist economy. They also contain an intriguing analysis of economic planning in a socialist society. This analysis anticipates many of the tenets of the disequilibrium school of economists of the 1970s. In his introduction, Jan Toporowski argues that Kalecki's work on the theory of growth in a socialist economy is incomplete and has often consequently been misrepresented without the analysis presented in these papers, which are in this edition. This book will be of interest to all those interested in Kaecki's work, the economics of planning, and economic policy-making.

The Other Canon of Economics, Volume 1

The Other Canon of Economics, Volume 1
Author: Erik Reinert
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2024-02-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1839982993

Other Canon Economics: Essays in the Theory and History of Uneven Economic Development brings together key essays on development economics from one of the most prolific and important development economists and historians of economic policy today. Erik S. Reinert argues through essays ranging from 1994 to 2020 that neo-classical economics damages developing countries, mostly via adherence to the theory of comparative advantage. Based on a long intellectual tradition, started by the Italian economists Giovanni Botero (1589) and Antonio Serra (1613), Reinert shows that the country which trades increasing returns goods – e.g. high-end manufacture – has advantages over the country which trades diminishing returns goods – e.g. commodities. This has important implications for today’s development strategies that, Reinert argues, should be seen as industrial strategies.

Economy

Economy
Author: Ron Martin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 723
Release: 2017-11-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1351159186

Economic geographers have always argued that space is key to understanding the economy, that the processes of economic growth and development do not occur uniformly across geographic space, but rather differ in degree and form as between different nations, regions, cities and localities, with major implications for the geographies of wealth and welfare. This was true in the industrial phase of global capitalism, and is no less true in the contemporary era of post-industrial, knowledge-driven global capitalism. Indeed, the marked changes occurring in the structure and operation of the economy, in the sources of wealth creation, in the organisation of the firm, in the nature of work, in the boundaries between market and state, and in the regulation of the socio-economy, have stimulated an unprecedented wave of theoretical, conceptual and empirical enquiry by economic geographers. Even economists, who traditionally have viewed the economy in non-spatial terms, as existing on the head of the proverbial pin, are increasingly recognising the importance of space, place and location to understanding economic growth, technological innovation, competitiveness and globalisation. This collection of previously published work, though containing but a fraction of the huge explosion in research and publication that has occurred over the past two decades, seeks to convey a sense of this exciting phase in the intellectual development of the discipline and its importance in grasping the spatialities of contemporary economic life.

Trade, Globalization and Development

Trade, Globalization and Development
Author: Rajat Acharyya
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2013-06-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 8132211510

This book was written in honour of Professor Kalyan K. Sanyal, who was an excellent educator and renowned scholar in the field of international economics. One of his research papers co-authored with Ronald Jones, entitled “The Theory of Trade in Middle Products” and published in American Economic Review in 1982, was a seminal work in the field of international trade theory. This paper would go on to inspire many subsequent significant works by researchers across the globe on trade in intermediate goods. The larger impact of any paper, beyond the number of citations, lies in terms of the passion it sparks among younger researchers to pursue new questions. Measured by this yardstick, Sanyal’s contribution in trade theory will undoubtedly be regarded as historic. After completing his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester he joined the Department of Economics at Calcutta University in the early 1980s and taught trade theory there for almost three decades. His insights, articulation and brilliance in teaching international economics have influenced and shaped the intellectual development of many of his students. After his sudden passing in February 2012, his students and colleagues organized a symposium in his honour at the Department of Economics, Jadavpur University from April 19 to 20, 2012. This book, a small tribute to his intellect and contribution, has been a follow-up on that endeavour, and a collective effort of many people including his teachers, friends, colleagues and students. In a nutshell it discusses intermediation of various kinds with significant implications for market integration through trade and finance. That trade can generate many non-trade-service sector links has recently emerged as a topic of growing concern and can trace its lineage back to the idea of the middle product, a recurring concept in Prof. Sanyal’s work.