Assessing changes in living standards in Southeast Asia in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries -- The colonial period: population and output growth in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors -- The colonial period: measures of welfare and changing living standards -- Confronting the...

According to western views, wealth is unambiguously good, and so human welfare is positive when wealth is in excess of needs, and negative if it is less. Islam has a substantially more sophisticated view of the relation between wealth and welfare. Excess wealth is a trial, which can bring great...

Developing countries start the decade facing two major challenges: to continue the social and economic progress of the past 30 years in an international climate that looks less helpful; and to tackle the plight of the 800 million people living in absolute poverty, who have benefitted too little...

The employment of financial development indicators without due consideration to country/regional specific financial development realities remains an issue of substantial policy relevance. Financial depth in the perspective of money supply is not equal to liquid liabilities in every development...

The story of South Asia is a topsy-turvy one. Soon after independence from British rule, the region seemed to have a much better prospect than many other parts of the Third World; the prospects soon dimmed, however, as South Asia crawled while East and Southeast Asia galloped away. But a large...