Written over the last three decades, this four volume set of Kaushik Basu's Collected Papers deals with both the philosophical foundations of economics as well as a wide range of issues of immediate policy relevance. Basu's work plays a significant role in transforming development economics from being a largely descriptive, long-winded, and unstructured discipline, to a much more rigorous and theoretically well-founded one. On one hand, the essays cover abstract
topics such as the scope of utilitarianism, strategic analysis, game theoretic behaviour, and philosophical underpinnings of individualism. On the other, they also address urgent contemporary concerns such as labour standards, growing inequality in a globalized world, sexual harassment at the workplace,
gender empowerment, and political origins of economic crises.
Volume I deals with the interaction between development, markets, and institutions. Volume II is a collection of papers on game theory and strategic analysis. Volume III focuses on welfare economics, law, and the making of global economic policy. Volume IV is a collection of the authors inter-disciplinary essays straddling several of the social sciences and also the philosophical foundations of economics.