This book is a compendium of Alok Bhargava's most important contributions in longitudinal econometric methods and its application to problems of food, nutrition and health. It demonstrates the usefulness of rigorous econometric and statistical methods in addressing issues of under-nutrition and poor child health in developing countries, as well as obesity in developed countries.

The close connection between the issues and themes analyzed in disciplines such as economics, nutrition, psychology, demography, epidemiology and public health, provides a sound basis for the formulation of public policies.

Contents:

• Methodological Contributions:
• Wald Tests and Systems of Stochastic Equations
• Identification and Panel Data Models with Endogenous Regressors
• Food Intakes, Health and Productivity in Developing Countries:
• Estimating Short and Long Run Income Elasticities of Foods and Nutrients for Rural South India
• Nutritional Status and the Allocation of Time in Rwandese Households
• Child Health and Cognitive Development in Developing Countries:
• Modeling the Health of Filipino Children
• A Dynamic Model for the Cognitive Development of Kenyan Schoolchildren
• AIDS Epidemic and the Psychological Well-Being and School Participation of Ethiopian Orphans
• Population Health and Economic Growth:
• Stochastic Specification and the International GDP Series
• Modeling the Effects of Health on Economic Growth
• Economic Demography:
• A Longitudinal Analysis of Infant and Child Mortality Rates in Developing Countries
• Family Planning, Gender Differences and Infant Mortality: Evidence from Uttar Pradesh, India
• Behavior, Diet and Obesity in Developed Countries:
• Estimating the Variations and Autocorrelations in Dietary Intakes on Weekdays and Weekends
• Socio-Economic and Behavioral Factors are Predictors of Food Use in the National Food Stamp Program Survey
• and other papers

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Readership: Academics and policy-makers in public health; students in economics, agricultural economics and public health.

"These essays by Alok Bhargava demonstrate the power of modern microeconometrics in addressing basic social problems. They also illustrate the value of grounding serious research in economics in the biology and science producing the phenomenon being studied. Bhargava has developed a powerful synthesis of economics and the biology of human nutrition. This is a collection of papers that richly repays a close read."

James Heckman Nobel Laureate in Economics University of Chicago

"Quantitative analysis is important to establish causal links between policy changes and the resulting nutrition and health effects. In this book, Alok Bhargava presents a very rich selection of such quantitative analyses, drawing on both econometrics and applied health sciences. The author employs his thorough understanding of economics, econometrics, public health, and nutrition, together with an outstanding ability to utilize quantitative analytical models to advance our understanding of food security, nutrition, and health, and how these factors are influenced by policy. This book is a must read for students and researchers interested in quantitative economic analysis of nutrition and health."

Per Pinstrup-Andersen H E Babcock Professor of Food, Nutrition and Public Policy Cornell University World Food Prize Laureate

"This remarkable volume is a testament to Professor Bhargava's breadth of interest and depth of scholarship, over a quarter of a century of research. It spans fundamental econometric methodology and many substantive empirical applications in health, nutrition, development and demography. The fact that the articles were originally published in journals across various disciplines makes the collection especially valuable."

Peter Robinson Tooke Professor of Economic Science and Statistics London School of Economics

"Professor Bhargava's papers demonstrate the advantage of combining path-breaking research in econometrics and its application to important real world problems. The relationship between food intake and health and productivity in developing countries is among the most important problems faced by governments and policy analysts. Other important issues such as effects of diet on child development are also carefully researched. I found the results in the papers in this book especially enlightening and recommend the book to readers interested in the problems of economic welfare in the developing world."

Jerry Hausman John and Jennie S MacDonald Professor of Economics MIT

"Alok Bhargava is the foremost econometrician presently working on food, nutritional and health issues. The statistical and technical rigor which is applied to the investigation of crucial nutritional and health questions within a multi-disciplinary framework makes this a truly unique volume."

Erik Thorbecke HE Babcock Professor of Economics & Food Economics, Emeritus Cornell University

"As a tropical medicine expert and microbiologist specializing in parasitology, I am glad to endorse this collection of papers by Professor Alok Bhargava. While these were previously published in high impact journals, few social scientists have tackled the complex biological issues as adroitly as Professor Bhargava. Any scientist working on issues of food and health should have this collection on his or her desk to enhance scientific productivity."

Peter J Hotez Professor and Chairman Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Tropical Medicine The George Washington University

"The determinants of human health, particularly the long-term effects of nutrition, are challenging to uncover due to the long latencies involved and lack of controlled experiments or definitive epidemological data. What one can learn has to come from careful and sophisticated statistical and econometric analysis that can unravel multiple causes and trace nutritional effects over lifetimes. Alok Bhargava is the master of this subject, and his insights and methods have defined the field and provided persuasive evidence on the role that nutritrion plays in the health and productivity in less developed countries. Every development economist, epidemiologist, and public health specialist should be provided with a straight-back chair, a good reading light, and this book."

Daniel L McFadden Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics University of California, Berkeley

"Few researcher have published up-front articles in leading journals in economics, epidemiology, nutrition, sociology, physiology, demography, as well as statistics. Alok Bhargava has, and this collection of his most prominent articles show why. Alok is also a leading bridge-builder across these disciplines, an urgent challenge for the international research community."

Peter Svedberg Professor of Development Economics University of Stockholm

"Reading Bhargava's articles on the biomedical basis of economic life in poor countries gives readers the thrill that really creative works are able to give. The analysis is invariably careful and the author never claims any more than is the warranted by the evidence. Most importantly, we learn from each piece. This is high quality social science."

Sir Partha Dasgupta Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics University of Cambridge

"Alok Bhargava has been one of the leading economists specializing in the impact of nutrition on health and productivity. He has brought to this work a highly sophisticated understanding of econometric issues, which he combined with far-ranging analysis of the epidemiology and physiology of health. The book is a tour through frontiers of a wide array of issues pertaining to health and economic growth."

Robert W Fogel Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics University of Chicago

"Bhargava is unique in his ability to apply training as an economist to the economic and social consequences of nutritional inadequacies and deficiencies in human populations. In this volume he displays a sound knowledge of nutrition as well as economics and explores a wide range of themes at the interface of these two disciplines. His contributions in the sections on relationships between child nutrition and learning and behavior and on population health and economic growth are particularly important for public policy. In a final section he makes useful observations on the variables involved in the epidemic of overweight and obesity that is already damaging the health of most industrialized populations and is becoming a threat in the developing countries as well."

Nevin S Scrimshaw President, International Nutrition Foundation Institute Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Senior Advisor, United Nations University World Food Prize Laureate

"Alok Bhargava's contribution to development economics bears upon what should be one of the cornerstones of the discipline, namely health and in particular children health and nutrition. He initially approached this complex field as an economist and an econometrician but he soon found bridges between economics and health sciences rarely crossed by development experts. Having all his work in this area in a single volume will be extremely useful for those motivated to look beyond a narrow focus on economics in the analysis of development."

Francois Bourguignon Chief Economist and Sr Vice President World Bank

"This work is must reading for anyone interested in food and nutrition science around the world."