Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades

This book provides an account of economic development in Palanpur, a village in rural North India, based on five detailed surveys of the village over the period 1957 to 1993. These five decades have seen economic well-being rise in some important respects, but stagnation and even decline inother areas. The analysis presented here focuses on the reasons behind this uneven progress. The authors tie in the background issues of the evolution of poverty and inequality and mobility over time with causal factors such as technological progress, demographic and sectoral changes, the operationof markets, and the role of public action. The richness and unique nature of the qualitative and quantitative data collected and presented by Lanjouw and Stern yields an analysis which illuminates questions of direct importance to researchers in a wide variety of disciplines.

Peter Lanjouw, Research Manager, Poverty Cluster, Development Economics Research Group, The World Bank,Nicholas Stern, IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, London School of Economics and Political Sciences

Dr Peter Lanjouw is the former Research Manager of the Poverty and Inequality Group in the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank. He first joined the Bank in 1992 after completing his Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics. His research focuses on poverty measurement methods and rural-urban economic transformation. He is a past editorial board member of the World Bank Economic Review and of the Journal of African Economies. He is also an Honorary Fellow of the Amsterdam Institute of International Development.

Professor Lord Nicholas Stern is IG Professor of Economics and Government at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. He is Director of the India Observatory, Chairman of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Chairman of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, and President-elect of the Royal Economic Society (2018-2019). He has also been a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords since 2007.