A study of the processes and problems of economic development in low-income countries. Evolution of developmental thinking on the role of market vs. state. Topics include interaction of civil, political, and economic spheres; quantification of social and economic aspects of development; incidence of poverty; industrialization; agricultural transformation; land, labor and credit allocation in rural environments; the household as an allocation mechanism; and environmental challenges of development. Lecture, discussion, exams, take-home class projects
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Readings:
OverView
Debraj Ray, Development Economics, March 2007, forthcoming in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, edited by Lawrence Blume and Steven Durlauf.
Globalization and Inequality
Martin Ravallion, 2004, Concepts of Inequality in the Globalization Debate ,Globalization,Poverty, and Inequality (2004), pp. 1-38, Brookings Trade Forum
Pritchett, Lant, 1997, Divergence: Big Time, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 11, Issue 3, Summer
François Bourguignon, Victoria Levin & David Rosenblatt, 2004, Declining International Inequality And Economic Divergence: ReviewingThe Evidence Through Different Lenses
History and Institutions
Nathan Nunn, The Importance of History for Economic Development, Annual Review of Economics, 2009
Nathan Nunn, 2008, Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa’s Slave Trades
Poverty
Angus Deaton, Measuring Poverty, 2004
Angus Deaton and Jean Drèze, 2008, Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations
Amartya Sen, 2007, Poverty, Evil and Crime
Abhijit V. Banerjee, Why Fighting Poverty is Hard , September 2008
Abhijit Banerjee, Vivi Alatas, Rema Hanna, Benjamin Olken and Julia Tobias, May 2010, Targeting the Poor: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia
Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, The Economic Lives of the Poor, October 2006, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol 21, No. 1, Winter 2007, pgs 141-167.
Esther Duflo, 2003, Poor but rational?
Risk, Insurance and Finance
Robert Townsend (1995), “Consumption Insurance: An Evaluation of Risk-Bearing Systems in Low Income Economies,” Journal of Economic perspectives, Summer 1995, Volume 9, Number 3
Morduch, Jonathan (1995) “Income Smoothing and Consumption Smoothing,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1995, Volume 9, Number 3
Besley, Tim (1995) Nonmarket Institutions for Credit and Risk Sharing in Low-Income Countries,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 1995, Volume 9, Number 3
Jonathan Morduch , 2004, "Microfinance: Where do we stand?" (PDF) (with Beatriz Armendariz).
Dean Karlan and Jonathan Morduch, 2009, Access to Finance
DATA
Individual Tables
Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4, Table 5, Table 6, Table 7, Table 8, Table 9, Table 10, Table 11, Table 12, Table 13, Table 14, Table 15 , Table 16, Table 17, Table 18, Table 19, Table 20, Table 21, Table 22, Table 23, Table 24, Table 25, Table 26, Table 27, Table 28, Table 29, Table 30, Table 31, Table 32, Table 33