Author: Dilip Mookherjee
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 164
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195667875
Description
These essays discuss the importance of and challenges for the second-and third-generation challenges for the second-and third-generation reforms in the Indian economy in an era of a continuously expanding role for market forces.
The author reviews in detail the following four areas: delivery systems for goods and services supplied by the government; tax collection; legal institutions; and regulation of the financial sector.
The need for such reforms gains emphasis in the light of experiences wit market reforms of many developing and transition economies in the erstwhile Soviet bloc in the past decade. Many of these economies have stumbled owing to lack of adequate governance reforms. These problems include corruption and misadministration of government programmes. Serious problems have resulted from weak legal and regulatory systems, which have undermined development of the private sector by failing to limit opportunities for fraud and embezzlement. Accordingly, the relevance of continued discussion of such reforms in the Indian context is paramount.
The essays have been written with a wide readership in mind. The arguments are based on large institutional detail and factual information, supported by analyses of academic economists and reports of government expert committees.
The book will interest business leaders, students, and teachers of economics and management.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
It is increasingly realized in many quarters that the major deficiency in the Indian economic reform process is in the matter of governance. Mookherjee is one of the few Indian economists to have paid serious attention to it in his research, both theoretical and empirical, over more than a decade. In this book his essays on reform in tax administration, financial regulation, legal institutions, and public delivery of social services draw upon detailed empirical research, analytical insights from the theory of incentives and organization, and the growing volume of international experience in reform, with a meticulousness and clarity that is exemplary. There is much to learn here for academics as well as policy-makers and administrators.
-Pranab Bardhan, University of California at Berkeley
In academic circles the debate on economic policy has, mercifully, moved away from the meritless one concerning the size of government. Recognition has grown that the success and failure of an economy depends largely on the kind of government it has. This has given rise to a new literature on governance and institutions-on how we should structure incentives within the government, increase efficiency, curb corruption, and design the modalities of the legal and regulatory system.
Dilip Mokherjee is a foremost expert in this area of research and this book covers the field with a magisterial sweep. For students of economics and those involved in crafting reform in developing and transition economics this book will be invaluable.
-Kaushik Basu, Cornell University.