Jean Drèze

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Jean Drèze is a development Economist of Belgian origin. His co-authors include Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen, with whom he has written on famine, and Nicholas Stern, with whom he has written on policy reform when market prices are distorted.

Jean's father, Jacques, founded CORE, the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, at the Université catholique de Louvain.

Jean is currently an honorary Professor at the Delhi School of Economics. He is a former member of the National Advisory Council of India.

Contents

[edit] Life & Work

Jean Drèze, born in Belgium in 1959, has lived in India since 1979 and became an Indian citizen in 2002. He studied Mathematical Economics at the University of Essex and did his PhD (Economics) at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi. He has taught at the London School of Economics and the Delhi School of Economics, and is now Visiting Professor at the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. He has made wide-ranging contributions to development economics and public economics, with special reference to India.

Drèze has worked on many issues relating to development economics including hunger, famine, education, gender inequality, childcare, school feeding, etc. His works combine standard economic methods (such as his articles relating to poverty in India) and tools that are used more commonly by anthropologists (such as his work on the village of Palanpur, Moradabad District, Uttar Pradesh, India with Nicholas Stern, Peter Lanjouw and others, which included him living for a period in village under the same conditions as local people, farming a plot of land and keeping animals as recounted with Naresh Sharma in the article "Sharecropping in a North Indian Village", Journal of Development Studies, Oct. 1996). The combination of extensive field work and qualitative analysis of everyday life and poverty, along with quantitative work makes his work distinctive in the field of economics. It is not coincidence that Amartya Sen has used him as a coauthor on a number of major publications on India, given his uniques contact with the grassroots and has even remarked that the "agreeable thing" about working with Dreze is that "he does most of the work and I get most of the credit". A key work widely cited that Dreze worked on as part of a small team was the primary education study of key states in northern India typically referred to by its short name, The PROBE Report, or The Public Report on Basic Education (1999). It remains a key reference due to the lack of similarly comprehensive studies using grassroots development specialists.

Apart from academic work he has been actively involved in many social movements including the peace movement, the Right to Information campaign that led to the Right to Information Act in India, the Right to Food campaign in India,[1] among others.

During the 1990-1991 Iraq War, he joined a peace camp stationed on the Iraq-Kuwait border. His 1992 article with Haris Gazdar, "Hunger and Poverty in Iraq, 1991", was one of the first assessments of Iraq's economy after the Gulf war, and an early warning about the potential human costs of the Iraq sanctions. Another book that came out of Iraq is, War and Peace in the Gulf, edited by Bela Bhatia, Jean Dreze and Kathy Kelly.

[edit] See also

[edit] Publications

  • Dreze, Jean "Patterns of Literacy and their Social Context", (originally written 199?), in Veena Das (ed.), 2004, Oxford Handbook of Indian Sociology, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Dreze, Jean, 2002, "On Research and Action", Economic and Political Weekly, March 2, 37 (9). New Delhi.
  • Dreze, Jean and Haris Gazdar, 1997. "Uttar Pradesh: the Burden of Inertia", in Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, (eds) Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen,(eds), 1997, Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 1989. Hunger and Public Action. Oxford University Press.
  • Drèze J. and Sen, A. (eds.). 1990. The Political Economy of Hunger. 3 volumes, Oxford University Press.
  • Drèze, J. 1990. Famine Prevention in India. In Drèze J. and Sen, A. (eds.) The Political Economy of Hunger. vol 2. Oxford University Press.
  • Stern, N. and Drèze J. 1991. Policy Reform, Shadow Prices and Market Prices. Journal of Public Economics.
  • Ahmad E, Drèze J, Hills J, Sen A K (eds.) 1991. Social Security in Developing Countries. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Drèze J., 1991. Public Action for Social Security: Foundations and Strategy. In Ahmad E, Drèze J, Hills J, Sen A K (eds.). Social Security in Developing Countries. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
  • Drèze J. and H. Gazdar. 1992. Hunger and Poverty in Iraq, 1991. World Development.
  • Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. 1995. India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity. Oxford University Press.
  • Drèze J., M. Murthi and A-C. Guio. 1995. Mortality, Fertility and Gender Bias in India. Population and Development Review.
  • Drèze J. and P.V. Srinivasan. 1997. Widowhood and Poverty in Rural India. Journal of Development Economics.
  • Drèze J., M. Samson and S. Singh. 1997. The Dam and the Nation: Displacement and Resettlement in the Narmada Valley. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0 19 5640047.
  • Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharma, "Palanpur: Population, Society Economy", chapter 1 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Dreze, Jean, Peter Lanjouw and Naresh Sharma, "Economic Development in Palanpur, 1957-93", chapter 2 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharam, "Tenancy", chapter 8 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Dreze, Jean, Peter Lanjouw and Naresh Sharma, "Credit", chapter 9 in Peter Lanjouw and Nicholas Stern, eds., Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades, 1998. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. (eds.) 1997. Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
  • Baland, J-M. Drèze J. and L. Leruth. 1999. Daily Wages and Piece Rates in Agrarian Economies. Journal of Development Economics.
  • A. De and J Drèze. 1999. Public Report on Basic Education in India. The PROBE report. Oxford University Press. 0195648706
  • Drèze J. (ed.) 1999. The Economics of Famine. International Library of Critical Writings in Economics. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Dreze, Jean and Naresh Sharma, 1996, "Sharecropping in a North Indian Village", Journal of Development Studies, 33(1):1-40.
  • Drèze J. and R. Khera. 2000. Crime, Gender and Society in India. Population and Development Review.
  • Bhatia B, J. Drèze & K. Kelly. 2001. War and Peace in the Gulf: Testimonies of the Gulf Peace Team. London: Spokesman Books. [published on the tenth anniversary of the Team's attempt to stop the Gulf War through non-violent occupation].
  • Drèze J. and G.G. Kingdon. 2001. School Participation in Rural India. Review of Development Economics 5(1), 1-24.
  • Drèze J. 2001. Fertility, Education and Development: Evidence from India. Population and Development Review.
  • Drèze J. and Sen, A.K. (eds.) 2002. India: Development and Participation. Oxford University Press.
  • Deaton A. and Drèze J. 2002.Poverty and Inequality in India: A Reexamination. Economic and Political Weekly, 7 September. 3729-3748.
  • Drèze J. 2003. Food Security and the Right to Food. In S. Mahendra Dev, K.P. Kannan and N. Ramachandran (eds). Toward a Food Secure India. New Delhi: Institute for Human Development.
  • Drèze, J. and A. Goyal. 2003. Future of Mid-Day Meals. Economic and Political Weekly, November 1.
  • Drèze J. 2004. Democracy and the Right to Food. Economic and Political Weekly. 1723-1731.

[edit] References

  1. ^ “Mid-day meals for schoolkids must”, Times of India, November 12, 2002, <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/28003100.cms> .

[edit] External links