This two-volume handbook surveys recent work in the field of development economics. Rather than seeking exhaustive surveys of the different aspects of the field, the editors (both of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, U. of Notre Dame) asked contributors to identify and discuss key issues and major contributions concerning their topic, examine analytical contributions and their relationship to real-world and policy issues, and to include under- represented alternative perspectives. The handbook's 71 papers, written by scholars from five continents, are organized in nine sections that, in turn, discuss introductory topics such as the meaning and measurement of economic development, historical and interdisciplinary perspectives, empirical regularities in development, and data problems and empirical modeling; alternative approaches such as dependency, structuralist, Marxist, institutionalist, and neoclassical theory; long- and short-run issues of macroeconomic growth and development; factors in development, both in the narrow sense of inputs such as capital, labor, and natural resources and in broader terms of entrepreneurship, the environment, and technological changes; sectoral and intersectoral dynamics; international issues of trade, capital flows, foreign aid, migration and brain drain, technology transfer, and international institutions; distributional issues, including measurement and determination of income inequality and poverty, the affect of income distribution on growth and development, gender and development, the welfare of children, and ethnic inequality; the role of the state and other institutions in development; and issues arising from empirical development experiences in Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, China, South Asia, East Asian newly industrialized countries, and the post-socialist transition economies. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)