Prelims

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Inclusive Developments Through Socio-economic Indicators

Title Page

Inclusive Developments Through Socio-economic Indicators: New Theoretical and Empirical Insights

Edited by

Ramesh Chandra Das

Vidyasagar University, India

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2023

Editorial matter and selection © 2023 Ramesh Chandra Das.

Individual chapters © 2023 the respective author/s.

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ISBN: 978-1-80455-555-2 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-554-5 (Online)

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Dedication Page

To my sister and brother-in-law

Contents

About the Contributors

Arpita Chaudhury Aich is pursuing PhD in Geography at Raja N. L. Khan. Women’s College (Autonomous), Vidyasagar University, Paschim Midnapore (West Bengal), India. She is working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of General Studies, University of Engineering and Management, Kolkata, India. Her main area of research interest is the study of socioeconomic issues.

Md. Saifullah Akon is an Assistant Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Dhaka. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in International Relations at the University of Dhaka. His areas of interest include foreign policy, security, Japan–South Asia relations and disaster governance.

Chandan Bandyopadhyay, PhD, is currently an Associate Professor of Economics at Asansol Girls’ College, India. He obtained his MA in Economics from The University of Burdwan securing the Gold Medal in 1994 and PhD from the same university in 2007. He has research interests in Gender Economics, Environmental Economics, Development Economics, etc.

Aparna Banerjee, PhD, is currently an Assistant Professor in Economics at Serampore College, India. She has research interests in various fields of Economics and almost 25 publications in reputed International/National Journals/Edited books are there in her credit.

Suparna Banerjee, PhD, is currently an Assistant Professor in Chemistry at Bangabasi Evening College, Kolkata, India. She has more than 20 publications in reputed international/national journals/edited books. Her research interests lie in various fields of nanoscience.

Mainak Bhattacharjee is presently an Assistant Professor in Economics at Loreto College, Kolkata, India, and formerly in The Heritage College, Kolkata, India. He has obtained MPhil and MA degrees in Economics from the Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He has been working in the areas of macroeconomics and international trade.

Sreelata Biswas, PhD, is presently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics, Sudhiranjan Lahiri Mahavidyalaya, Nadia, India. She has completed her PhD from Department of Economics, University of Kalyani. She has published a number of research papers in nationally and internationally scholarly journals.

Suchismita Bose, PhD, is an Economist with ICRA for 18 years and a major contributor to the ICRA Bulletin Money & Finance. Her work focussed on financial markets. She received her doctoral degree from the Indian Statistical Institute. Presently, the Chief Economist at SURGE Research Support, she continues research in Applied Econometrics.

Alessia Bruzzo, PhD, received her PhD in ‘Real Estate Market Analysis’ in 2017 from the University of Genoa. Her main research interests are in real estate, particularly the macroeconomic evaluation of the 2007 subprime crisis and the estimation of real estate prices with respect to geographic and social indicators.

Manh-Tien Bui is a PhD Candidate in Economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy, the Australian National University. His research focuses on Political Economy, Energy Economics and Applied Economics. He has participated in various research projects related to regional and provincial development planning, COVID-19 policy evaluation and other economic-related policy studies in Vietnam.

Mehmet Akif Ceylan, PhD, is Professor in the Faculty of Art and Sciences at the Marmara University. He received his undergraduate degree from the Dicle University in 1986. He has accomplished his master’s degree at the Istanbul University and received PhD from the Marmara University, Turkey.

Amrita Chakraborty is currently associated with University of North Bengal as Research Scholar. She has got good number of publications in reputed national and international journals and edited volumes.

Chandrima Chakraborty, PhD, is working in the Department of Economics, Vidyasagar University, India, as Assistant Professor. She did her MPhil and PhD in Economics from Jadavpur University, India. Currently, she is pursuing an ICSSR Major Research Project as Principal Investigator. Her major area of academic interest includes applied econometrics, gender studies, health, education, industrial economics and environmental economics.

Saptarshi Chakraborty, PhD, works as Professor of Economics in the Department of Commerce and the Principal of Panchakot Mahavidyalaya, Purulia, India. He has several papers and chapters published in journals and books, besides completion of two Minor Research Projects of The University Grants Commission, Government of India to his credit.

Suman Chakraborty, PhD, is working as an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Economics of Raja N. L. Khan Women’s College (Autonomous), West Bengal, India. His research and teaching experience is more than 14 years. His main area of research interest is the study of socioeconomic issues and also the issues of financial economics.

Nilendu Chatterjee, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, Bankim Sardar College, India. His research interests in resource economics, international economics, econometrics and development economics. He has a list of publications with internationally reputed journals and books.

Tonmoy Chatterjee, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics, Bhairab Ganguly College, India. He has research interest in International Trade Theory, General Equilibrium, Health Economics and Development Economics, and has a list of publications with the internationally reputed journals and books.

Somnath Chattopadhyay, PhD (Quantitative Economics) from Indian Statistical Institute, is an Active Researcher in Applied and Theoretical Econometrics. Presently he is an Assistant Professor of Economics at KRKKM, a degree college affiliated to the University of Burdwan. Earlier he worked as Economist at the Monetary Research Project of ICRA.

Anjan Ray Chaudhury, PhD, is a Senior Assistant Professor and the Head of the Department of Economics, Durgapur Government College, West Bengal, India. He has obtained MSc and PhD in Economics from the University of Calcutta, India. He has the credit of 22 years of research and teaching experience. His research interests are welfare economics, development economics, advanced econometrics, etc.

Duc Manh Chu is currently working as Research and Teaching Assistant at Fulbright School of Public Policy and Management after obtaining a Master’s degree in Public Policy there. His research interests include economics, public policy and development policy.

Aghaulor Kosy Cletus is associated with the Department of Economics, University of Delta, Nigeria. His main areas of research lie in Environmental Economics, Social Sectors and Public Economics. He has published a list of articles in reputed journals and books.

Dipankar Das, PhD, is a Research Scholar in the Department of Economics at West Bengal State University, India. He has published a number of research articles in different journals. His areas of interest are finance, econometrics, education and environment economics.

Promila Das, PhD, is working as an Assistant Professor of Economics in School of Business, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, India. She obtained her PhD degree in Development Economics from Assam University, Silchar, India, in 2017. Her current research interests are related to development economics, gender economics, energy economics and applied economics.

Ramesh Chandra Das is presently Professor of Economics at Vidyasagar University, India. Dr. Das has published several articles in internationally reputed journals and edited dozens of books in the fields of macroeconomics, environmental economics and development economics.

Sunanda Das has done her master’s in Economics from Vidyasagar University, India, with first class. She also holds a diploma in Data Science from the same university. She has research interests in agricultural economics, social sector, inclusive growth and development.

Hasan Dinçer, PhD, is Professor of Finance at Istanbul Medipol University, Istanbul-Turkey. He has more than 100 scientific articles and some of them are indexed in SSCI. He is also the Editor of many different books published by Springer and IGI Global.

Dipti Ghosh is currently working as Junior Research Fellow in Economics at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. She did her Master’s in Economics from Presidency University, Kolkata, India, and received a MPhil degree in Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. Her research interests lie in macroeconomics and Indian economy. She has been associated with Bijoy Krishna Girls’ College, Howrah, India.

Adem Gök, PhD, is currently employed in Department of Economics at Kırklareli University, Turkiye as an Associate Professor. He holds a PhD in Economics from Marmara University since 2016. His research areas include economics of governance, environmental economics, economics of education and financial economics.

Enrico Ivaldi, PhD, is Professor of Social Statistics and Demography in the Department of Political Science, University of Genoa, Italy. He is the Member of C.I.E. (Centro de Investigaciones en Econometría) – Universitad de Buenos Aires and member of C.I.E.L.I., the Italian Center of Excellence on Logistics Transports and Infrastructures. He researches on the topic of social indicators and sustainable development.

Elena Viktorovna Korchagina, PhD, is a Professor at the Graduate School of Service and Trade, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg, Russia. She has supervised several doctoral students and projects in poverty eradication.

Napoleon Y. D. Kurantin, PhD, is a Senior Research Fellow in Natural Resource Management, Development Economics, International Development, Geographic Information Science and Systems (Geo-spatial Intelligence). He is the Vice Dean of the Academic Division of the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College (GAFCSC).

Thai-Ha Le, PhD, is the Managing Director at the VinFuture Foundation. She holds a PhD in Economics from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her primary research fields include Energy Economics, Environmental Economics and Applied Economics. According to rankings compiled by Stanford University and published in PLoS Biology in 2021 and Elsevier in 2022, she is among the world’s top 1% of most influential scientists across all scientific fields.

Abhijit Maity is a Research Scholar in the Department of Economics, Vidyasagar University, India. He is pursuing PhD in Economics on Education and Health. He completed his MPhil in the year 2018 from Vidyasagar University. Besides, he is working as a State Aided College Teacher in Hijli College, West Bengal.

Abdullah-Al-Mamun, PhD, is the Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Japanese Studies, University of Dhaka and Research Director of the Centre for Governance Studies. He did his PhD at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He earned his BSS & MSS in Sociology from the University of Dhaka. He is an MBA and did a Diploma in Japanese Studies.

Prosenjit Mukherjee, PhD, is currently an Assistant Professor in Economics at Bangabasi Evening College, Kolkata, India. He published several publications in reputed international/national journals/edited books, etc. His research interests are in various fields of economics.

Sayantan Mukherjee is presently a Research Scholar at the Department of Economics, The University of Burdwan. His areas of research interest are development economics, agrarian economics, poverty and inequality.

Sovik Mukherjee is presently an Assistant Professor in Economics (Morning Section) under the Faculty of Commerce and Management at St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata, India. He is a former Visiting Research Fellow (2019–2020) at NISPAcee, Bratislava, Slovak Republic. His current research interests are in applied econometrics, applied game theory, economics of climate change and public policy.

Debabrata Mukhopadhyay, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Economics, West Bengal State University, India. He has 20 years of teaching and research experience in different fields of economics. He has been presently working on green finance and social determinants of health.

Partha Mukhopadhyay has been a Research Scholar at Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Institute Durgapur, India; and works at Business Excellence Department of Duragpur Steel Plant, Steel Authority of India Limited. His research interest includes business management, agricultural management, applied econometrics, etc. He has a number of publications in reputed journals and books.

Debasish Nandy, PhD, is an Associate Professor and Head, Department of Political Science, Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol, West Bengal, India. He is a Visiting Faculty in the Department of Foreign Area Studies, Tajik National University, Republic of Tajikistan. His research areas include India’s Foreign Policy, South Asian Politics, South-East Asian Affairs and Security Studies.

Rohini U. Nikam, PhD, is presently associated with the Faculty of UG and PG levels. She worked as Examiner/Paper Setter for SPPU. Her areas of interest in law and human resource management.

Okoh John Onuwa is presently a Lecturer at the Department of Economics, University of Delta, Nigeria. His main areas of research lie in economic development and international economics. He has published a list of articles in reputed journals and books.

Bertha Z. Osei-Hwedie, PhD, is a Professor of International Relations and former Coordinator of PhD Programme, School of Public Service and Governance, Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). She was the Founding and Acting Dean of the School of Research and Graduate Studies, GIMPA. Her research interests include China, Japan, gender and development, African politics and development, and globalization.

Riddhima Panda has completed MSc in Economics from Calcutta University. She is working as an Assistant Professor (Guest) at the Department of Economics & Commerce, Syamaprasad College, Kolkata, India. Her main area of interest in research is the study of socioeconomic issues and also the issues of financial economics.

Samrat Ray is presently working as Professor & Dean, International Institute of Management Sciences, Pune, India. He is Senior Researcher at Peter the Great Saint Petersburg polytechnic University, Russia, specializing in big data analytics in poverty eradication and development economics. He has authored more than 60 articles in Scopus listed journals and published books on Machine Learning.

Anup Kumar Saha, PhD, is presently working as an Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Nabadwip Vidyasagar College, India. He has completed his PhD from Department of Economics, University of Kalyani. He has published a number of research papers in nationally and internationally renowned journals. SEBI has recognized him as a certified Resource Person.

Bibhas Saha is Associate Professor of Economics at Durham University, UK. Before joining Durham, he worked at the University of East Anglia, UK and Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, India. He studied MA in Economics at Calcutta University, India, before completing his PhD from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. His main field of interest is applied micro theory, spanning over several sub-fields such as mixed oligopoly, trade union bargaining, corruption, behavioural economics, economics of betting, microfinance and political economy. He has published in journals like Games and Economic Behavior, Social Choice and Welfare, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Management and Strategy, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Labour Economics, Economic Letters, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Economics, Review of Development Economics, among others. Previously he was the Co-editor of the Journal of Quantitative Economics, and currently, he is one of the Co-editors of Review of Development Economics.

Otene Samson is associated with the Department of Economics, University of Delta, Nigeria. His main areas of research lie in economic development, environmental economics and public economics. He has published a list of articles in reputed journals and books.

Atanu Sengupta, PhD, is presently Professor of Economics at Burdwan University, India. He earned Gold Medal in MSc Economics from the same university. His PhD was from Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Professor Sengupta has research interests in theoretical and applied economics, social economics and development economics.

Begum Sertyesilisik, PhD, is presently a Professor. She has been awarded a PhD at the Middle East Technical University; a MSc and a MBA at the Istanbul Technical University. She has specialised in the field of construction project management, sustainability, sustainable built environment, contract and dispute management.

Egemen Sertyesilisik, PhD, currently a Freelancer, has received an MA degree in Politics and Mass Media from the University of Liverpool, UK, and a MBA degree from the Yıldız Technical University, Turkey. He has received his PhD at the Marmara University, Turkey, in the field of political economy of the Middle East.

Shamsunnahar is a Research Associate at the Pan Asia Research Institute (PARI). She obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Dhaka. Her research interest includes peace, development, security, etc.

Roop Kishore Singhal, PhD, is presently Professor & Dean, International Institute of Management Sciences, Pune, India, having academic experience of more than 20 years. He is working on diverse portfolios of development economics.

Madhabendra Sinha, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Department of Economics & Politics, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India. Previously he served as an Assistant Professor at Department of Business Administration, Raiganj University, India. He obtained Masters and Doctoral degrees in Economics from University of Calcutta and NIT Durgapur, India. His research interests include international economics, development economics and applied econometrics.

Ashu Tiwari, PhD, currently works as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies in Dehradun, Uttarakhand (India). She completed her PhD from the Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, Haryana, in Economics and Public Policy. Apart from academics, she has more than eight years of industry experience in management, consultancy and research.

Gülsüm Sena Uluer is a 4th grade Business Administration Student in Istanbul Medipol University. She is also a student of Business Administration Integrated Master with Thesis at Istanbul Medipol University. Her research interests are sustainable energy economics and project finance, electricity, renewable energy, and nuclear energy.

Serhat Yuksel, PhD, is a Professor of Finance at Istanbul Medipol University, Istanbul-Turkey. He has more than 80 scientific articles and some of them is indexed in SSCI. He is also the Editor of many different books published by Springer and IGI Global.

List of Abbreviations

Foreword

The last 200 years of global trade show that not only is trade a necessity but also is desirable for growth and prosperity of nations. If we use the contemporary terminology of globalization, we may be allowed to present the world’s economic history in terms of three distinct phases of globalization. While the first phase of it, lasting from 1814 to 1914, was known for free trade and unfettered movement of labour spreading economic benefits to countries that could engage in free trade, the second phase lasting from 1915 to 1980, was marred by two world wars, extreme contraction in global trade, tariff wars and protectionist trade regimes that benefitted mainly the USA, Japan and Western Europe, the so-called developed world. In this phase, trading blocs were important platforms of intra-bloc free trade, but tariff barriers were placed to ward off the competing blocs, as a result of which the benefits of free trade and investment were restricted to fewer countries. This phase can hardly be called a phase of globalization. The third and current phase of globalization began to integrate free trade with domestic competition and deregulation, and boldly promote private enterprises, trade in services and free cross-border movement of capital. We are truly living through a regime of internationally mobile capital and skilled labour, and our daily lives are serviced by a globally sourced supply chain, thanks to modern communication and information services technology, and last but not least, the opening up of two remarkably important countries, China and India, which will continue to shape the global trade in goods and services.

Some of the benefits of the current phase of globalization are evident in the sharp decline of absolute poverty (an early achievement of the first Millennium Development Goals), not just in India and China, but also in much of Africa. Per capita incomes of some of these countries grew unmistakably. The rich and the middle class populations of China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Indonesia and South Africa enormously benefitted, although in relative terms which section gained more remains an open question. While by some studies, the first three decades of the current phase of globalization (1980–2010) have reduced global income inequality, most authors now fear that the picture has changed of late. Within-country inequality has been growing, and the very poor have been left behind everywhere; even for the middle class, the growth momentum is disappearing. Whether free trade is the root cause of it is yet to be determined. But the public manifestation of growing despair and disappointment is too obvious to miss, as populist politics is spreading across continents often promising to reverse globalization, at least the free trade part of it. Serious doubts have emerged about the world’s capacity to create inclusive societies amidst the high-speed traffic of trade and finance that globalization has unleashed.

Against this backdrop of waning support for globalization, this edited volume by Ramesh Chandra Das has attempted to compile a number of important studies from a distinguished body of international academicians that have rightly turned our attention to inclusive growth and development in a much broader sense than what mere economic categories permit. The studies discuss the goals of inclusive development in respect of different socio-economic sectors and groups in the presence of good governance practices. With 25 chapters divided in to two sections, the book includes various theoretical modelling and empirical exercises. The issues of convergence in socio-economic indicators have been elaborately dealt with for groups of countries as well as for individual nations. Scholars and researchers from different fields such as Economics, Sociology, Political Science, Public Finance, among others, should benefit from this book. The policy-makers, practitioners, public officials and NGOs will also find something from this book that they can apply to their development discourse and practice.

Dr Bibhas Saha

Department of Economics

Durham University Business School

Durham University, UK

Introduction

There is no doubt that the world economy has progressed rapidly after the different phases of the globalization process initiated by the major part of the world. But there is a by-product of this huge progress. According to the World Bank, the globalization process has led to bring down the inequality in income at the world level, but there are increasing inequalities across countries and some groups of economies. There are so many economic, social and environmental factors in determining the income and wealth of a country as well as a group of countries. There have been immense studies on the income aspects of these inequality factors across the countries and regions but there is a crunch of studies on the social indicators behind the presence of such inequalities. The 17 points agenda of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cover many sectors from the social sector. The social sector is the foundation of any nation which not only generates income in the long run, it also generates social justice and moral values which ultimately helps in the true development of the countries in the long run.

The principle of the market economy usually does not nurture the social indicators; it solely plays with the capitalistic mode of production out of the profit maximizing behaviour of the entrepreneurs. It does not bother what the roles of the social sectors like education, health, etc., will be in the economic decision-making processes. The rule of the market strongly nullifies the intervention by the government sector in economic activities. But market principle sometimes fails and the roles of the unknown forces, the set of natural forces, hold the key to the operation of the system. The issues of risks and uncertainties bear the credit for haltering the performance of the pure market theory. The emergence of the different economic crises in the past and the outbreak of COVID-19 in recent times have pointed out the flaws of the market principle and justified the roles of the public policies in restoring the socio-economic bonding. The huge investment in the health sector, sizeable amounts of government stimulus packages for food security, online aids for education, etc., are the key policies that had to be undertaken for the sake of the economic and social well-being. The role of the government institutions thus in general has been to upgrade the socio-economic status of the poor and backward classes without hampering the richer ones in the society to have an equitable distribution of income and social indicators. The countries are seemed to earn the capacity to converge to the relatively richer ones and reap the benefits step-by-step to reach the ultimate goal of sustainable development.

The present edited book titled Inclusive Developments Through Socio-economic indicators: New Theoretical and Empirical Insights throws light upon the roles of different socio-economic indicators in ensuring or explaining convergence and inclusiveness of income across different income groups in the world. The studies cover up the highly related issues in the social sector and posit alternative source of explanations for the convergence and inclusiveness of income in these groups of economies. The book has compiled a list of highly rich 25 studies in the related themes that explain inclusive developments through several socio-economic indicators in both theoretical and empirical lines from across the world.

Keeping in mind its broad coverage, the book is structured in two separate sections to present the list of the finalized chapters. Section I encapsulates the discussions on economic growth, convergence and inclusive development through different socio-economic indicators in the groups of countries. It covers both the theoretical as well as empirical analysis of the said issues for the groups of economies. Section II captures the deliberations on the poverty and inequality aspects of different socio-economic indicators in countries. There are 12 chapters in Section I and 13 chapters in Section II. The modicum of the chapters is outlined below.