Two and a half billion people are affected directly on a day-to-day basis by the allocation and use of purely local resources. Yet "official" development economics has concentrated on headline international issues and only recently begun to take account of the dependence of poor countries on their natural resources, the link between acute poverty and environmental degradation, and the problems associated with the management of local common property such as soil and soil cover, water, forests and their products, animals and fisheries. In this volume, part of the WIDER Program on the Economics...

The idea of the quality of life is central to economic and social assessment and also to public policy, social legislation, and community programs. However, the commonly used indicators of economic success such as per capita income are at best crude measures of the quality of life. There is a strong need for a systematic exploration of the content, reach, and relevance of the concept of the quality of life, and ways of making it concrete and usable. In this collection of essays, some leading economists and philosophers rise to that challenge and provide a wide-ranging investigation. The...

Hailed on its initial publication as a work with immediate implications for countless lives, Dreze & Sen's The Political Economy of Hunger is the classic analysis of an extraordinary paradox: in a world of food surpluses and diseases of overeating, hunger kills millions more people each year than wars or political repression. Now this abridged version puts the most essential and influential essays from the three-volume work within the reach of concerned citizens who want to understand the real causes of hunger and deprivation.
Famines, the contributors believe, are caused not just by...

Women, a majority of the world's population, receive only a small proportion of its opportunities and benefits. According to the 1993 UN Human Development Report, there is no country in the world in which women's quality of life is equal to that of men. This examination of women's quality of life addresses questions which have a particular urgency, and aims to describe the basic situation of all women. The contributors confront the issue of cultural relativism, criticizing the approach which, in its desire to respect different cultural traditions, can result in indifference to injustice....

Women, a majority of the world's population, receive only a small proportion of its opportunities and benefits. According to the 1993 UN Human Development Report, there is no country in the world in which women's quality of life is equal to that of men. This examination of women's quality of life addresses questions which have a particular urgency, and aims to describe the basic situation of all women. The contributors confront the issue of cultural relativism, criticizing the approach which, in its desire to respect different cultural traditions, can result in indifference to injustice....

The currency crises that engulfed East Asian economies in 1997 and Mexico in 1994--and their high development costs--raise a serious concern about the net benefits for developing countries of large flows of potentially reversible short-term international capital. Written by senior policy-makers and academics, the contributions to this volume examine in depth the macroeconomic and policy dilemmas confronting public authorities in the emerging economies as they deal with short-term capital movements, especially in the period before the outbreak of these crises.

Since the end of the cold war, the number of civil wars in developing countries has escalated to the point where they are the most significant source of human suffering in the world today. Although there are many political analyses of these emergencies, this two-volume work is the first comprehensive study of the economic, social, and political roots of humanitarian emergencies, identifying early measures to prevent such disasters.

Since the end of the cold war, the number of civil wars in developing countries has escalated to the point where they are the most significant source of human suffering in the world today. Although there are many political analyses of these emergencies, this two-volume work is the first comprehensive study of the economic, social, and political roots of humanitarian emergencies, identifying early measures to prevent such disasters.

This book is the first comprehensive assessment of the mortality crisis in transitional economies. Contributions by demographers, economists, sociologists, epidemiologists, and health experts provide a rigorous analysis of the upsurge in mortality rates, with the aim of contributing to the launch of vigorous policies to tackle the crisis.

more nolume brings together a significant new collection of studies on formality and informality in developing countries. Containing contributions from some of the very best analysts in development studies, the volume is multidisciplinary in nature, with contributions from anthropologists, economists, sociologists, and political scientists.