Essays in economic analysis and policy: a tribute to Bhabatosh Datta

This collection of essays in economic analysis and policy edited by Dipak Banerjee brings together some of the finest minds working on economics today, all of whom are former students of Bhabatosh Datta at Presidency College, Calcutta

Amartya Sen's essay on the methodology of economics, 'a discipline, not a science' considers the diversity of its concerns and objectives which preclude simple methodological prescriptions. Asok Sen finds that the concept of economic man in any of its versions in neo-classical, classical or Marxian economics is too limited for a satisfactory approach to the problem of economic development. Tapas . Majumdar's essay focuses on the choice of the

appropriate level of literacy, including computer literacy for a developing economy in a high technology world. Mukul Majumdar examines the problem of the failure of decentralization in infinite horizon economics where technological change takes place and proves an impossibility theorem for such non-stationary environments. Jati K. Sengupta extends the Farrell efficiency concept to multiple output models so that the concept becomes more useful to economic theory and for the econometrics of the production frontier. Tapan Biswas examines stochastic dominance theory from a general framework of unanimous ordering of a pair of lotteries by a set of individuals and relates his analysis to several results obtained by other workers in this area. Alok Ray's essay on the argument in favour of infant industry protection reveals the theoretically unsatisfactory fashion in which much of the policy making and implementation has been conducted.