Here Partha Dasgupta, an internationally recognized authority in economics, presents readers with a solid introduction to its basic concepts, including efficiency, equity, sustainability, dynamic equilibrium, property rights, markets, and public goods. Throughout, he highlights the relevance of economics to everyday life, providing a very human exploration of a technical subject. Dasgupta covers enduring issues such as population growth, the environment, and poverty. For example, he explores how the world's looming population problems affect us at the local, national, and international level. Economics has the capacity to offer us deep insights into some of the most formidable problems of life. Here, Dasgupta goes beyond the basics to show it's innate effects on our history, culture, and lifestyles. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Economics: A Very Short Introduction

Business & Money

Dasgupta, Partha

Economics

Oxford University Press

How should economic and social theory accommodate empirical facts about physical destitution, and how should governments respond to famines and hunger? This interdisciplinary book focuses on these and other questions about physical well-being. Partha Dasgupta begins his approach from the perspective of development economics. He then broadens his discussion to include philosophical work and empirical data on resource allocation, nutrition science, and anthropology. Comprehensive in its coverage of poverty, its causes, and remedies, this seminal work is essential to scholars and professionals in moral and political philosophy, anthropology, nutrition science, economic theory, and welfare economics.

An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution

How should economic and social theory accommodate empirical facts about physical destitution, and how should governments respond to famines and hunger? This interdisciplinary book focuses on these and other questions about physical being. Dasgupta's aim here is to offer a description of destitution as it occurs among rural populations of the poor countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; to give an account of the forces at work which perpetuate destitution, and to offer prescriptions for both the public and private spheres of life. A central concern of the author has been to reconcile theoretical considerations with the empirical evidence that has been obtained in the several disciplines this work encompasses, including anthropology, demography, ecology, geography, and philosophy. The entire discussion is designed to provide a philosophy for human well-being that can guide public policy in poor countries. Therefore, the role of the State, of communities, of households, and of individuals is studied in considerable detail. The author reveals an empirical link between greater political and civil liberties and improvements in life expectancy at birth, national income per capita, and infant survival rates. He identifies patterns of asset redistribution that promote economic growth by raising labor productivity, and argues that democratic participation in the design of public policies is not only intrinsically valuable, but has strong instrumental virtues: it allows privately held information to be put into effective use. Dasgupta presents evidence to show that significant reductions in military budgets would free the resources needed for the satisfaction of citizens' basic economic needs, and he provides guidance for the motivation and necessary focus of governments. He also looks at the allocation of food, work, health care, education, and income across genders, age groups, and orders of birth. He explores the findings of nutritionists on the link between food needs and work capacity, and develops a language to allow the environment to be included in social policies and calculations. By covering an unprecedented range of material, An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution becomes required reading for all those concerned with the human situation and the plight of the destitute.

Clarendon Press

Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment

Dasgupta develops methods of valuation and evaluation with the aim of measuring, and searching to improve, the quality of our lives. He focuses on the ways in which our quality of life is now known to be tied to the natural environment.

In Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment, Partha Dasgupta explores ways to measure the quality of life. In developing quality of life indices, he pays particular attention to the natuaral environment, illustrating how it can be incorporated, more generally, into economic reasoning in a seamless manner. Such familiar terms as "sustainable development," "social discount rates," and Earth's "carrying capacity" are given a firm theoretical underpinning. The author shows that, whether we are interested in valuing the state of affairs in a country or in evaluating economic policy there. The index that should be used is the economy's wealth, which is the social worth of its capital assets. Dasgupta puts the theory he develops to use in extended commentaries on the economics of population, poverty traps, global warming, structural adjustment programs, and free trade, particularly in relation to poor countries. The result is a treatise that goes beyond quality-of-life measures and offers a comprehensive account of the newly emergent subject of ecological economics. With the publication of this new paperback edition, Dasgupta has taken the opportunity to update and revise his text in a number of ways, including developments to facilitate its current use on a number of graduate courses in environmental and resource economics. The treatment of the welfare economics of imperfect economies has been developed using new findings, and the appendix has been expanded to include applications of the theory to a number of institutions and to develop approximate formulae for estimating the value of environmental natural resources.

Hardcover with two jackets in very good condition. From the collection of the late Professor Sir A.B. Atkinson. AF

Selected Papers of Partha DasGupta

The Selected Papers of Partha Dasgupta brings together the works of one of the most distinguished economists working today. Professor Dasgupta was Knighted in 2002 for services to economics and his research interests have covered welfare and development economics, the economics of technological change, population, environmental and resource economics, the theory of games, and the economics of undernutrition. This two-volume collection represents a body of work spanning 40 years and contains a selection of Dasgupta's most original papers on six key themes. Both volumes feature foundational papers and substantial original introductions. The articles reflect inter-disciplinary scholarship in the author's search for a unifying way to analyse the problems people face in trying to allocate resources over time, among groups, and across uncertain contingencies. Each volume opens with an extended essay explaining the motivation underlying economics; the concept of what economics is about and how modern economists move within it. The author makes essential use of findings in anthropology, demography, ecology, geography, moral philosophy, and the environmental and nutritional sciences, but studies social phenomena through the lens of economics, to unravel the pathways by which scarce resources are produced, exchanged, and disseminated.

Selected Papers of Partha Dasgupta: Volume I: Institutions, Innovations, and Human Values and Volume II: Poverty, Population, and Natural Resources

How should we evaluate the ethics of procreation, especially the environmental consequences of reproductive decisions on future generations, in a resource-constrained world? While demographers, moral philosophers, and environmental scientists have separately discussed the implications of population size for sustainability, no one has attempted to synthesize the concerns and values of these approaches. The culmination of a half century of engagement with population ethics, Partha Dasgupta’s masterful Time and the Generations blends economics, philosophy, and ecology to offer an original lens on the difficult topic of optimum global population. After offering careful attention to global inequality and the imbalance of power between men and women, Dasgupta provides tentative answers to two fundamental questions: What level of economic activity can our planet support over the long run, and what does the answer say about optimum population numbers? He develops a population ethics that can be used to evaluate our choices and guide our sense of a sustainable global population and living standards. Structured around a central essay from Dasgupta, the book also features a foreword from Robert Solow; correspondence with Kenneth Arrow; incisive commentaries from Joseph Stiglitz, Eric Maskin, and Scott Barrett; an extended response by the author to them; and a joint paper with Aisha Dasgupta on inequalities in reproductive decisions and the idea of reproductive rights. Taken together, Time and the Generations represents a fascinating dialogue between world-renowned economists on a central issue of our time.

Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing Planet (Kenneth J. Arrow Lecture Series)

Business Culture

Columbia University Press

Most books in environmental economics either employ complex mathematical models or resort to a recital of case studies. What makes this new book by a leading expert in resource economics so useful is the careful blend of theory and practice. Terms and techniques are explained fully, and only a modest technical background in economics and mathematics is assumed. Partha Dasgupta examines the problems of resource management and pollution control within a common framework and relates them to issues in development planning. He also draws extensively on environmental literature to which students and policymakers seldom have access. Special attention is given to critical issues in environmental decisionmaking, such as externalities, pricing, cost-benefit analysis, uncertainty, and optimization. The author also uses real-world examples to illustrate difficult concepts.

The Control of Resources

Harvard University Press

Most books in environmental economics either employ complex mathematical models or resort to a recital of case studies. What makes this new book by a leading expert in resource economics so useful is the careful blend of theory and practice. Terms and techniques are explained fully, and only a modest technical background in economics and mathematics is assumed. Partha Dasgupta examines the problems of resource management and pollution control within a common framework and relates them to issues in development planning. He also draws extensively on environmental literature to which students and policymakers seldom have access. Special attention is given to critical issues in environmental decisionmaking, such as externalities, pricing, cost-benefit analysis, uncertainty, and optimization. The author also uses real-world examples to illustrate difficult concepts.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dasgupta, Partha. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dasgupta, Partha

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dasgupta, Partha. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Economics: A Very Short Introduction

An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution

An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution

Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment

Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment

Selected Papers of Partha DasGupta

Selected Papers of Partha Dasgupta: Volume I: Institutions, Innovations, and Human Values and Volume II: Poverty, Population, and Natural Resources

Time and the Generations: Population Ethics for a Diminishing Planet (Kenneth J. Arrow Lecture Series)

The Control of Resources

The Control of Resources