The Cultural Basis of Economic Growth in India

Based on a three-year joint research project, this book collects studies on the cultural basis of economic growth in India. Unlike the foregoing investigations on India’s economic growth from the economic perspectives, this book presents interdisciplinary discussions on India’s economic growth. The participants in this project consist of a cultural anthropologist who is an expert in the social and historical study on India as well as a group of researchers specializing in various fields of economics such as growth theory, public finance, income distribution, family economics, and economics of education. Our joint research yields new insights on India’s economic growth and social change. In addition, this book presents new findings of happiness in India obtained by our large-scale survey.

Kazuo Mino is a former professor at the Institute of Economics Research of Kyoto University (KIER) and a professor emeritus of Kyoto University. He currently works at KIER as an adjunct professor. Mino obtained a Ph.D. in economics from Brown University in 1984. He is the former president of the Japanese Economic Association and the former editor of the Japanese Economic Review. Previously, he worked at Hiroshima, Tohoku, Kobe, Osaka, and Doshisha Universities. Mino has published extensively in scholarly journals on various topics in macroeconomic theory including growth and business cycle models, monetary and fiscal policies, and open economy macroeconomics. He also published a research monograph, Growth and Business Cycles with Equilibrium Indeterminacy, Springer 2017.

Tadashi Yagi is a professor in the Faculty of Economics at Doshisha University.  He holds a Ph.D. in economics, awarded by Nagoya University in 1996.  His research areas are wide-ranging, including public economics, human resources management, income distribution, welfare economics, and cultural economics.  He has written many papers in refereed academic journals and chapters in edited volumes. His important papers include “Economic Growth and the Riskiness of Investment in Firm-Specific Skills” (with Taichi Maki and Koichi Yotsuya) European Economic Review (2005), “Income Redistribution through the Tax System: A Simulation Analysis of Tax Reform" (with Toshiaki Tachibanaki) Review of Income and Wealth (1998), and “Public Investment and Interregional Output-Income Inequalities" (with Nobuhiro Okuno) Regional Science and Urban Economics (1990). His recent works include “Moral, Trust and Happiness: Why does Trust Improve Happiness?“ Journal of Organizational Psychology (2017), and “Happiness and Self-Determination: An Empirical Study in Japan” (with Kazuo Nishimura) Review of Behavioral Economics (2019).