This paper presents a new approach to evaluating the aggregate literacy level in country or region. The resulting 'effective literacy' measure takes into account intrahousehold externality arising from presence of literate member. A simple and natural axiomatic characterisation is provided along with an empirical illustration using Indian data.

It has been known that, in aggregating infinite utility streams, there does not exist any social welfare function, which satisfies the axioms of Pareto, intergenerational equity, and continuity. We show that impossibility result persists even without imposing continuity axiom, frameworks allowing for more general domains utilities than those used existing literature.

Journal Article The pattern and causes of economic growth in India Get access Kaushik Basu, Basu * Cornell University Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, kb40@cornell.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Annemie Maertens ** University, am445@cornell.edu Review Economic Policy, Volume 23, Issue 2, Summer 2007, Pages 143–167, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grm012 Published: 01 January 2007

Journal Article ONE KIND OF POWER Get access KAUSHIK BASU Delhi School of EconomicsIndia * I owe my broad interest in this subject to conversations with Sukhomoy Chakravarty and Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri. In writing paper have benefited from the comments H. Leung, Jean-Phillipe Platteau Nick Stern, seminars at London Economics, University Warwick Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. am indebted Steven Lukes a very stimulating conversation also acquainting me Vaclav Havel's manuscript. This...

Journal Article THE EMERGENCE OF ISOLATION AND INTERLINKAGE IN RURAL MARKETS Get access KAUSHIK BASU CORE, Louvain-la-Neuve, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and The Delhi School of Economics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Economic Papers, Volume 35, Issue 2, July 1983, Pages 262–280, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.oep.a041595 Published: 01 1983

One of the central tenets mainstream economics is Adam Smith's proposition that, given certain conditions, self-interested behavior by individuals leads them to social good, almost as if orchestrated an invisible hand. This deep insight has, over past two centuries, been taken out context, contorted, and used cornerstone free-market orthodoxy. In Beyond Invisible Hand, Kaushik Basu argues that its conservative popularizers have misrepresented hampered our understanding how economies...

This paper shows that in a model of managerial delegation duopoly, if an owner's decision to hire manager is modeled explicitly, then the subgame perfect equilibrium may coincide with Stackelberg solution. Interestingly, this can happen even when cost hiring same for owner each firm.

Journal Article A THEORY OF ASSOCIATION: SOCIAL STATUS, PRICES AND MARKETS Get access KAUSHIK BASU Delhi School of EconomicsIndia and Princeton UniversityU.S.A. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Economic Papers, Volume 41, Issue 1, 1989, Pages 653–671, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.oep.a041919 Published: 01 January 1989

The widespread phenomenon of goods being priced at D dollars and 99 cents is explained without abandoning the assumption full rationality; it shown that as a consequence such pricing producers who are generally worse off.

Abstract The control of bribery is a policy objective in many developing countries. It has been argued that asymmetric punishments could reduce by incentivizing whistle‐blowing. This paper investigates the role played punishment setting where bribe size determined Nash bargaining, detection costly, and rates are set endogenously. First, if whistle‐blowing infeasible, symmetry properties irrelevant to deterrence but not size. Bribery disappears expected penalties sufficiently high; otherwise,...