Articles by Bimal Jalan

An Evaluation of Its Relevance for the Developing Countries Bimal Jalan Introduction THE current upsurge of interest in the methods of project evaluation would semi to he the result of two empirical findings with respect to the results of past industrialisation policies in developing countries: (a) that, in these countries, there exist pervasive divergences between market prices and social values, and (b) that the pursuit of import substitution strategy by many of these countries has led to the encouragement of import substitution projects regardless of social costs. The finding that social values may diverge from market prices is, of course, not new in economics; what has given it a new relevance for development policy is the conviction that widespread government intervention in the economies of developing countries may have served to further accentuate rather than attenuate these divergences. 1 Once it could also be shown that government policies have made possible the domestic production of many manufactured products in developing countries at exceptionally high social cost, the conclusion was inevitable that what the developing countries needed was a good method of project evaluation, which would bridge the gap between private and social values.

A Policy Frame for Self-Reliance Bimal Jalan The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it is an attempt to develop an analytical framework for consideration of appropriate policies for premature Self-reliance in a developing economy, dependent on foreign aid to finance part of its planned deficit in external payments or investment requirements. The need for such an analytical framework arises because while all developing countries frequently profess their anxiety to achieve self-reliance as soon as possible, none has tried to define this objective in an operationally meaningful way or attempted to devise a policy frame which would make the objective credible either to themselves or to their benefactors. The second object of this paper is to examine the issue of self-reliance in the wake of suspension of United States aid to India, particularly with reference to the Fourth Plan

Differential Interest Rates

The Story of Industrialisation Bimal Jalan (1) Industry and Trade in Some Developing Countries: A Comparative Study by Ian Little, Tibor Scitovsky and Maurice Scott; Oxford University Press, pp xxii + 512.

Bimal Jalan While there should be wider diffusion of the benefits of economic development, recent policy measures on industrial licensing and for control of big business are unlikely to meet that commendable objective. This is so because the criteria in the application of those measures are not those of efficiency, nor is the levelling down achieved by them in any way destined to help the 95 per cent or more of the country's population that exist just about at, or below, subsistence level.