Measuring Development

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

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2. Setting the Stage: Types of Measures and Alternative Notions of Development

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 1-49

3. Toward an Inequality-Sensitive Measure of Development: The Unidimensional Case

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 51-83

4. Unidimensional Development Ranking and Fuzzy Lorenz Dominance

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 85-108

5. Illustrative Applications of Unidimensional Development Indices

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 109-131

6. Multidimensional Lorenz Dominance

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 133-154

7. Multidimensional Inequality-Sensitive Development Ranking

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 155-190

8. An Illustration: Multidimensional Development and Inter-State Inequality in India in the 2000s

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 191-217

9. Overview and Concluding Remarks

   • Asis Kumar Banerjee

   Pages 219-226

10. Back Matter

    Pages 227-230

    PDF

This book discusses how to measure the level of development of an economy, particularly, the task of ranking economies in terms of their development. In this context, development is defined as an increase in people’s level of wellbeing. The book emphasises that wellbeing is a multidimensional concept, and that it is important to ask how equitably the fruits of development are distributed, and as such it focuses on multidimensional, inequality-sensitive development ranking. Rather than using various specific development indices, which would lead to different development rankings for a country, the book proposes a dominance approach, which formulates conditions under which two economies can be ranked unambiguously, making it valid for all reasonable development indices. With the help of illustrative examples using real-world data, it demonstrates that such unambiguous rankings are possible, and that the proposed approach can be used to complement traditional approaches. An invaluable resource for researchers working in the field of development, the book will also appeal to practitioners engaged in measuring development.


An excerpt from the book's Foreword:
"[This book] is a comprehensive and valuable contribution to the literature on the measurement of inequality and the use of such measurement in the assessment of social welfare. I believe that it will be of much interest to researchers working on measures of inequality and social welfare as well as advanced graduate students who are looking for a solid introduction to this important area of normative economics."
-          Prof. Prasanta K. Pattanaik, University of California, Riverside, California, U.S.A.

• Measurement of Development
• Multidimensional Well-being
• Multidimensional Inequality;
• Development Ranking of Countries
• Development and Inequality

“Asis Banerjee's book is one that anyone working in the area should, in the least, have an opinion of. The importance of taking inequality seriously in development measures is rightfully championed by the author, and the difficultly of achieving robust rankings highlights the potential for much future work.” (Aaron Nicholas, Economic Record, Vol. 97 (317), June, 2021)

“The book is a notable addition to an area of normative economics that has assumed renewed prominence in the context of rising dissatisfaction with the vaunted gains of globalization.” (Soumyen Sikdar, Journal of Quantitative Economics, Vol. 18, 2020)

• University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India

  Asis Kumar Banerjee

Asis Kumar Banerjee is a former Vice-Chancellor and a former Professor of Economics at the University of Calcutta. He holds an M.A. in Economics from the same university, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Johns Hopkins University. He has been associated with Presidency College, Calcutta; the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi; and the University of California, Riverside, California. His research interests include welfare economics, game theory and economic development. 

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