Development economics is about understanding how and why lives change. How Lives Change: Palanpur, India, and Development Economics studies a single village in a crucially important country to illuminate the drivers of these changes, why some people do better or worse than others, and what influences mobility and inequality. How Lives Change draws on seven decades of detailed data collection by a team of dedicated development economists to describe the evolution of Palanpur's economy, its society, and its politics. The emerging story of integration of the village economy with the outside world is placed against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming India and, in turn, helps to understand the transformation. It puts development economics into practice to assess its performance and potential in a unique and powerful way to show how the development of one village since India's independence can be set in the context of the entire country's story. How Lives Change sets out the role of, and scope for, public policy in shaping the lives of individuals. It describes how changes in Palanpur's economy since the late 1950s were initially driven by the advance of agriculture through land reforms, the expansion of irrigation and the introduction of "green revolution" technologies. Since the mid-1980s, newly emerging off-farm opportunities in nearby towns and outside agriculture became the key driver of growth and change, profoundly influencing poverty, income mobility, and inequality in Palanpur. Village institutions are shown to have evolved in subtle but clear ways over time, both shaping and being shaped by economic change. Individual entrepreneurship and initiative is found to play a critical role in driving and responding to the forces of change; and yet, against a backdrop of real economic growth and structural transformation, this book shows that human development outcomes have shown only weak progress and remain stubbornly resistant to change.

The analysis of rural markets and the behaviour of those involved in them should be at the centre of the study of the economies of poor countries. This book is about such markets and its main purpose is to examine and develop theories relating to them in the context of an Indian village. Byfocusing on a particular village, the book analyses some of the many contradictory and grand assertions about the nature and consequences of the "Green Revolution".

Since the mid-1980s, David F. Ruccio has been developing a new framework of Marxian class analysis and applying it to various issues in socialist planning, Third World development, and capitalist globalization. The aim of this collection is to show, through a series of concrete examples, how Marxian class analysis can be used to challenge existing modes of thought and to produce new insights about the problems of capitalist development and the possibilities of imagining and creating noncapitalist economies. The book consists of fifteen essays, plus an introductory chapter situating the author’s work in a larger intellectual and political context. The topics covered range from planning theory to the role of the state in the Nicaraguan Revolution, from radical theories of underdevelopment to the Third World debt crisis, and from a critical engagement with regulation theory to contemporary discussions of globalization and imperialism.

The fifth edition of The Process of Economic Development offers a thorough and up-to-date treatment of development economics. It has been extensively revised throughout, reflecting the most recent developments in research and incorporating the latest empirical data, as well as key theoretical advances and many new topics. The world has seen vast economic growth in China, economic transformation in India, new challenges in Latin America, rapid economic progress in Southeast Asia, and the deepening impact of environmental issues such as climate change. This new edition addresses all these critical issues as well as the pivotal role of the state, where China’s capacity is contrasted with that of African states. Transnational corporations’ reliance on low-wage manufacturing and labor arbitrage is featured in the book. Agricultural policy—extensively explored—remains crucial, as does the promotion of industrialization. This fifth edition offers a ‘state-of-the-art’ analysis of these essential themes and many others. Numerous case studies and issue focuses have been integrated with sundry central topics. Neoclassical theories and applications, including a timely exploration of behavioral economics, are both rigorously and accessibly explicated. Cypher’s comprehensive account remains the development economics text par excellence, as it takes a much more practical, hands-on view of the issues facing the developing countries than other, overly mathematical texts. This book is unique in its scope and in the detailed attention it gives to a vast range of ideas, including pioneering developmentalist and heterodox formulations. Distinct institutional structures are examined within their historical contexts. This landmark text will continue to be an invaluable resource for students, teachers, and researchers in the fields of development economics and development studies.

Re/presenting Class is a collection of essays that develops a poststructuralist Marxian conception of class in order to theorize the complex contemporary economic terrain. Both building upon and reconsidering a tradition that Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff—two of this volume’s editors—began in the late 1980s with their groundbreaking work Knowledge and Class, contributors aim to correct previous research that has largely failed to place class as a central theme in economic analysis. Suggesting the possibility of a new politics of the economy, the collection as a whole focuses on the diversity and contingency of economic relations and processes. Investigating a wide range of cases, the essays illuminate, for instance, the organizational and cultural means by which unmeasured surpluses—labor that occurs outside the formal workplace‚ such as domestic work—are distributed and put to use. Editors Resnick and Wolff, along with J. K. Gibson-Graham, bring theoretical essays together with those that apply their vision to topics ranging from the Iranian Revolution to sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta to the struggle over the ownership of teaching materials at a liberal arts college. Rather than understanding class as an element of an overarching capitalist social structure, the contributors—from radical and cultural economists to social scientists—define class in terms of diverse and ongoing processes of producing, appropriating, and distributing surplus labor and view class identities as multiple, changing, and interacting with other aspects of identity in contingent and unpredictable ways. Re/presenting Class will appeal primarily to scholars of Marxism and political economy. Contributors. Carole Biewener, Anjan Chakrabarti, Stephen Cullenberg, Fred Curtis, Satyananda Gabriel, J. K. Gibson-Graham, Serap Kayatekin, Bruce Norton, Phillip O’Neill, Stephen Resnick, David Ruccio, Dean Saitta, Andriana Vlachou, Richard Wolff