Artha Vijnana: Journal of The Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics

B. Debroy

Abstract

Measures of social welfare have been decomposed according to sources of income (Chakrabarty, 1983 and Debroy, 1986). By measures of social welfare we mean Sen's (1974) welfare measure, Kakwani's (1980) welfare measure and Kakwani's (1981) generalized welfare measure. We write Sen's welfare measure as W^S, Kakwani's welfare measure as WK and Kakwani's generalized welfare measure as W. The theoretical decomposition of WS was carried out in Chakrabarty (1983) and the theoretical decompositions of W^K and W were carried out in Debroy (1986).

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B. Debroy

Abstract

This study examines certain aspects of income inequality in East Europe. Studies on income inequality in East Europe have been attempted earlier, such as, Kiuranov (1974), Michal (1973 and 1974), Wiles and Markowski (1971) and Debroy and Kulkarni (1984). Of these, the Kiuranov paper is devoted exclusively to Bulgaria, while the Wiles and Markowski study singles out Poland. Debroy and Kulkarni also consider Poland alone. Michal's papers cover a number of socialist countries of East Europe. All of these studies basically concentrate on computing inequality coefficients for wage and salary and/or per capita income distributions. As shall become apparent, our intention is to go a bit further. A second intention is to make use of the data for recent years, since the afore-mentioned studies, with the exception of the Debroy and Kulkarni one, only use data available up to the early 1970s.

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B. Debroy

Abstract

Chakrabarty (1983b) has, in a recent issue of this journal, decomposed Sen's (1974) welfare measure into additive components corresponding to various sources of income. The procedure was illustrated by using data collected by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) for the agricultural year July 1975 to June 1976 and published as Household Income and Its Dispositon. This particular paper was a natural sequel to Chakrabarty (1982, 1983a), in which the theoretical framework for decomposing Sen's welfare measure into additive components was worked out and various welfare measures were computed for Indian income distributions.

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B. Debroy

Abstract

John R. Lampe's book on the Bulgarian economy in the twentieth century (Lampe, 1986) is part of the Croom Helm series on the contemporary economic history of Europe. The general editor of the series, Derek A1dcroft, has written an editor's introduction to the present volume, in which, the salient characteristics of the Bulgarian economy are succinctly stated. Priced at £25.00 and running into 245 pages, Lampe's book does provide a very good account of the Bulgarian economy. Given the lack of good accounts of the Bulgarian economy, with the notable exception of Feiwel (1977), Lampe's volume fills an important gap. Lampe needs no introduction as an economic historian writing on Balkan economic history. In fact, one of the avowed intentions of the present volume is to update, expand and revise the extensive treatment given to Balkan economic history in Lampe and Jackson (1982). This earlier book covered the period from 1550 to 1950. Therein lies the present book's weakness. Read as an independent account of the Bulgarian economy, the book is eminently readable. But read in conjunction with Lampe and Jackson (1982), one feels that John Lampe should have concentrated on Bulgaria's experience in the post-1950 period. For the period preceding 1950, the treatment in Lampe and Jackson (1982) is far superior to the treatment in Lampe (1986) and there has been very little in the nature of updating, expansion or revision in the latter as compared to the former: And Lampe's treatment of Bulgaria's experience in the post-1950 period has simply not been extensive enough. In all fairness to Lampe, one has to agree that the continuity between the periods before and after the Communist accession to power has to be emphasized. But the general points made about the weakness of Lampe (1986) still stand. Lest this sound too harsh, one should iterate yet again that read as an independent account of the Bulgarian economy, the book is eminently readable.

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B. Debroy

Abstract

This paper examines earnings, incomes and living standards in the People's Republic of Bulgaria. The paper is in four sections. The first section examines earnings, the word earnings being used as a catch-all term for both wages and salaries, that is to say, incomes from labour. The second section looks at incomes. The third and fourth sections of the paper consider living standards and prices respectively.

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B. Debroy

Abstract

Andre Beteille' s new collection of essays (Beteille, 1983b) examines various aspects of equality and inequality with particular attention being devoted to the Indian context. They deal with alternative normative conceptions of inequality as well as with the morphological forms and dimensions of inequality. These six essays were delivered as lectures in London (August Comte Memorial Lecture), Cambridge (Kingsley Martin Memorial Lecture), Sydney, and Bombay (Ambedkar Memorial Lectures, Duhr Memorial Lecture, G.L. Mehta Memorial Lecture). As an indicator of the crystallisation of Beteille' s views on inequality, it is pertinent to note that all of the lectures, except the Sydney one, were delivered between March 1979 and March 1982. The lecture in Sydney on "Harmonic and Disharmonic Social Systems" was delivered in 1971. It is not that these six essays have not been published earlier. "Equality of Opportunity" is the only one to be available in published form for the first time. Of the remaining five, three had been published as Beteille (1979, 1980, 1981a), while the other two had been published in slightly different form as Beteille (1971, 1981b). Apart from the question of accessibility, the justification for bringing together these six essays in one volume is the usual one of a certain common thread running through all of them.

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