This collection captures the current debates and consensus on issues relating to macroeconomic policy, banking and internatinal finance, monetary policy, and financial sector reforms.

In recent years, the relationship between income distribution and the process of development has come under increasing scrutinity. Much of the debate has focused on the hypothesis, originally advanced by Simon Kuznets, that the secular behavior of inequality follows an inverted U shaped pattern...

"The world made significant progress on reducing poverty between 1981 and 2001 — the number of people in developing countries living on less than US$1 a day fell from 1.5 billion to 1.1 billion, or from 40 to 21 percent of the world's population. In fact, however, nearly all this progress...

"The world made significant progress on reducing poverty between 1981 and 2001 — the number of people in developing countries living on less than US$1 a day fell from 1.5 billion to 1.1 billion, or from 40 to 21 percent of the world's population. In fact, however, nearly all this progress...

"India's strategy for reducing poverty and hunger has always placed a great deal of importance on the agricultural sector, reflecting the fact that 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas and the overwhelming majority of them depend upon agriculture as their primary source of income....

Opinions on the causes of India's growth deceleration vary. World economic growth was slower in the second half of the 1990s, and that would have had some dampening effect, but India's dependence on the world economy is not large enough for this to account for the slowdown. Critics of...