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Article Economics prof contributes a much-needed textbook to his disciplineBy Eric McHenry The field of development economics, predictably, has seen quite a bit of development during the past two decades. Globalization and the advent of useful new theoretical models have brought increased scrutiny to the economies of developing nations. Textbooks, however, have for the most part failed to keep pace. That's why Development Economics, a comprehensive new book by CAS Professor of Economics Debraj Ray, is winning so much attention. Amartya Sen, a development economist who this month received the Nobel Prize, has called it "an elegant, insightful, and extremely effective textbook." "Researchers and teachers are hailing it as the field's definitive textbook -- the first in 25 years to make development theoretically coherent, and to convey the dynamism of recent findings and theories," Peter Monaghan reported in the September 25 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Ray had long been aware of the need for a new, thoroughgoing textbook on development. He began writing Development Economics about four years ago, recognizing that he was uniquely well positioned to contribute such a work. At 41, Ray has come into his own as a social scientist entirely within the past 20 years -- the pivotal period for his discipline. Moreover, he was born and reared in India, and served from 1986 to 1992 as a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute. He has spent much of his life observing economic systems in the context of a developing country. "When you're writing a book about a subject," he says, "you're either writing about a 'they' -- 'They have problems' -- or you're writing about a 'we.' Being from a developing country myself, I had no choice in the matter: my point of view has to be from the 'we' side of things." Such a perspective, he says, has two principal implications for his 848-page book: he doesn't rush to blame all of a developing nation's economic problems on colonialism, and he doesn't espouse what he calls "the international consultant's stance": get into a developing country and try to fix it. "The vital thing," he says, "is to understand the interaction between the sociology of developing countries, the culture of developing countries, the anthropology of developing countries, and their economies. In that sense, this study of the subject is slower and more careful than its predecessors." On the recommendation of Laurence Kotlikoff, CAS professor of economics, Princeton University Press expressed early interest in Ray's manuscript. Peter Dougherty, publisher of social science and public affairs for Princeton, says Development Economics is precisely the sort of book he spends his workdays seeking. "I elicited reports from a number of very good economists on the scholarly content and quality of the manuscript," he says, "and I don't think I've ever seen such unanimity of opinion. Everybody that I talked to said this is the next great book in development economics." Dougherty adds that he didn't find such testimony difficult to come by. Even when it was only half-complete, Ray's manuscript was being used in college classrooms throughout the country. That's because over the past 15 years Ray has firmly established himself as an authority on development economics, microeconomics, and game theory. He is "one of the leading economists of his generation," according to a book review written for India's The Business Standard by Bhaskar Dutta, who also happens to be one of the leading economists of his generation. Ray's curriculum vitae is full of contributions to such periodicals as Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies -- the sort of publishing credits that economists prize. Indeed, textbook writing is something of a road less traveled for academics, Ray says. It is widely thought of as a thankless pursuit, and not without reason. "If you're an assistant professor on a tenure track, no one would recommend that you write a textbook," Ray says. "The profession generally rewards original research published in journals. When you write a textbook, you're asking for trouble, because during the four years that you spend working on it, you're probably not doing other research." That makes the cachet that has attached itself to Development Economics all the more unusual. The critical community is looking upon Ray's book as potentially instructive not only to students, but to their professors.
Stripping away the math is precisely what Ray has done. Only in an occasional footnote does Development Economics move beyond high school algebra. Ray is a strong believer in the importance of accessibility. "When I first got into economics," he says, "my main goal was to try to communicate to young kids, from developing countries as well as from the United States, some of the complexities of the development problem. And that's why I wrote this book." For such communication to take place, he says, the book itself -- not just its material -- must be made accessible to everyone. Toward that end, Princeton has sold rights to Development Economics inexpensively to Oxford University Press, which has in turn made a low-price edition available in India. Ray adds that he is in no hurry to churn out new editions of the book, which when they enter the market tend to discourage cheap secondhand sales of the original version. Dougherty says the book's prospects for finding a mass audience are quite good. Several translations appear to be in the offing, and overseas sales have been strong. "It hasn't even been out for a year," he says, "and we're seeing adoptions of it all around the world." |
