The first part of this paper provides a broad evaluation of the performance of the Indian economy (including cross country comparisons) and highlights the economic crisis faced by India in June, 1991. This crisis proved to be a turning point for the economy, providing the impetus for the initiation of revolutionary though studied and pragmatic economic reforms by the then Congress government. A...

Asia is the most populous continent on earth. Changes in inequality or poverty in this region alter the corresponding global picture. Due to its remarkable economic growth and catch up in living standards, Asia has been an equalizing force in constituting international inequality. However, within-country inequalities in Asia are fast rising, which have contributed to the slow down in poverty re...

Brazil recently overtook the UK as the sixth largest economy, a measure of the strong economic growth experienced since 2003. Growth has been intensely propoor, and both poverty and inequality have declined significantly in the last decade. What explains the unexpected success shown by Brazil in combining sustained economic growth with a reduction in poverty and inequality? Some researchers sug...

All of the recent empirical work on the relationship between income inequality and economic growth has used inequality data that are not consistently measured. This paper argues that this is inappropriate and shows that the significant negative correlation often found between income inequality and growth across countries is not robust when income inequality is measured in a consistent manner, u...

As the United States approaches the twenty-first century... in an information-based, transnational and managerial economy, it is becoming increasingly apparent that if we do not better negotiate race and ethnicity in our society, we will not adequately solve the problems of economic inequality and discrimination. Racial and/or ethnic divisions and competition shape our efforts to understand and...

When deciding how to weigh benefits to different groups, standard economic models assume that people focus on the final distribution of utility, health or whatever. Thus, an egalitarian is assumed to be an egalitarian in the outcome space. But what about egalitarianism in the gains space, such that people focus instead on how equally benefits are distributed? This paper reports on a study in wh...

This paper looks into the relations between economic growth and poverty reduction in Jamaica. A poverty profile is constructed, based on household budget survey data, and per capita growth is decomposed into pure growth effects and changes in inequality effects. I find that growth has contributed to poverty reduction mainly because there has not been any large increases in inequality. However, ...

As the development agenda beyond 2015 takes shape, it is increasingly being recognized that inequality is an impediment to the integration of economic growth, social inclusion and environmental sustainability. Despite high and enduring economic growth and significant progress in terms of poverty eradication, inequalities persist in Asia and the Pacific, and in some instances they have intensifi...

Article history: Received 15 September 2015 Received in revised form 23 January 2016 Accepted 16 February 2016 Available online xxxx We study the relationship between intelligence (IQ) and happiness inequality, measured by the standard deviation of life satisfaction, in a cross section of 81 countries. We find that higher levels of IQ are significantly correlated with lower levels of happiness ...

This paper distills and extends recent research on the economics of human development and social mobility. It summarizes the evidence from diverse literatures on the importance of early life conditions in shaping multiple life skills and the evidence on critical and sensitive investment periods for shaping different skills. It presents economic models that rationalize the evidence and unify the...