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Bibliographical Note to Chapter 1
Changes in thinking about development strategies have resulted from the work of a large number of economists. Much of this thinking is summarized in Gerald M. Meier, ed., Pioneers in Development:Second Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Particularly useful essays are those by Gottfried Haberler, "Liberal and Illiberal Development Policy" (pp. 51-83), and Hla Myint, "The Neoclassical Resurgence in Development Economics: Its Strength and Limitations" (pp. 107-36). Two fundamental volumes for changing thought about the particular role of agriculture are Theodore W. Schultz, Transforming Traditional Agriculture (1964; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); and John W. Mellor, The Economics of Agricultural Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966). An elaboration of the role of agriculture in the development process is described in John W. Mellor and Bruce F. Johnston, "The World Food Equation: Interrelations among Development, Employment and Food Consumption," Journal of Economic Literature 22 (June 1984): 531-74.
One of the first books to focus on the empirical circumstances of agricultural policies was D. Gale Johnson, World Agriculture in Disarray (London: Macmillan, 1973). This book is concerned largely with the developed countries. More development-oriented discussions are provided in Theodore W. Schultz, ed., Distortions of Agricultural Incentives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978). Another useful work in this context is C. Peter Timmer, Walter P. Falcon, and Scott R. Pearson, Food Policy Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); this book emphasizes the linkages between both macroeconomic and commodity-specific policies and microeconomic responses.
The incorporation of policy distortions into formal economic analysis owes much to the work of Jagdish N. Bhagwati, "The Generalized Theory of Distortions and Welfare," in Trade, the Balance of Payments, and Growth: Papers in International Economics in Honor of Charles P. Kindleberger, ed. Bhagwati et al. (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1971), pp. 69-90; and W. M. Corden, Trade Policy and Economic Welfare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). The empirical framework for policy analysis, based on government objectives, economic constraints, and choice of policy instruments, was first proposed in C. Peter Timmer, "The Political Economy of Rice in Asia: A Methodological Introduction," Food Research Institute Studies 14, no. 3 (1975): 191-96. An empirical application of this framework is presented in Scott R. Pearson, J. Dirck Stryker, and Charles P. Humphreys, Rice in West Africa: Policy and Economics (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1981), especially pp. 363-95.
The separation of efficiency and nonefficiency objectives remains a hotly debated issue in many areas of economics, particularly in cost-benefit analysis. Most of these arguments have arisen in the context of combining income distribution concerns with efficiency. Chapter 5 of D. W. Pearce, Cost-Benefit Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1983), provides a summary of the debate. Analytical models that develop an integrated approach include Robin W. Boadway, "Integrating Equity and Efficiency in Applied Welfare Economics," Quarterly Journal of Economics 90 (November 1976): 541-56; and Lyn Squire and Herman G. van der Tak, Economic Analysis o f Projects (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). Prominent opponents of the integration approach include E. J. Mishan, Introduction to Normative Economics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); and Arnold Harberger, "On the Use of Distributional Weights in Cost-Benefit Analysis," Journal o f Political Economy 86 (April 1978): S87-5120; and Harberger, "Reflections on Social Project Evaluation," in Pioneers in Development: Second Series, ed. Gerald M. Meier (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 151-88. Comments on the latter paper by Partha Dasgupta and Deepak Lal, in Meier, Pioneers in Development, pp. 189-202, are also directed at the integration issue.
Perhaps the most telling arguments against the incorporation of nonefficiency objectives come from the recent literature on the political economy of public choice. An early contribution to the literature on linking economic benefits and policies with the lobbying efforts of various interest groups is Anne O. Krueger, "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review 64 (June 1974): 291-303. Additional research on this topic is considered in Robert D. Tollison, "Rent Seeking: A Survey," Kyklos 35 (1982): 575-602; and in Jagdish N. Bhagwati, "Directly Unproductive, ProfitSeeking (DUP) Activities," Journal of Political Economy 90 (October 1982): 988-1002. Also relevant are the many works on public choice that concern the expression of societal preferences (for example, Dennis Mueller, Public Choice [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979]) and the self-interested actions of government policy-makers (for example, Richard Posner, "Theories of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, 5 [Autumn 1974]: 335-58).
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