EC310: Topics in Development Economics
Dr. Subhasish Dey , Spring Term 2022
Syllabus (week 1-5)
Lectures: Combination of Asynchronous (Prerecorded) and Synchronous (live)
Feedback and advice hours Subhasish Dey: Wednesday 4 to 6 pm
Course Outline
Development economics asks why some countries are poor while others are rich, how countries
become richer, and what the best policies to promote economic development are. Development
economics also studies the incentives and actions of the people in charge of designing and
implementing development policies. This course will cover some important topics in
development economics, using recent theoretical and empirical papers.
Course objectives
By the end of the course, students should understand the current state of knowledge in the
covered topics, the models economists use to think about these topics and the empirical methods
used to analyse data, test theories, and evaluate development policies.
Readings are either required or suggested. In the syllabus, * stands for required readings.
Together with material in lecture notes, it is expected you know the required readings for the
exam. There is no single textbook for the course. During the lectures, we will cover papers in
detail.
Topic 1: Stylised Facts and Growth Theory
*Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. 2007. “The Economic Lives of the Poor”. Journal
of Economic Perspectives 21 (1): 141–167
Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. 2008. “What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes
around the World?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 2:3–28
*Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. 2003. “Inequality and Growth: What can the data
say?” Journal of Economic Growth 8:267–299
*Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Thomas Piketty. Chapter- Introduction, Chapter 7, 8, 9, 12
Theodore W. Schultz. 1980. “Nobel Lecture: The Economics of Being Poor”. Journal of
Political Economy 88 (4): 639–651.
Topic 2: Poverty Traps
*Costas Azariadis and John Stachurski. 2005. “Poverty Traps”. Chap. 05 in Handbook of
Economic Growth, 1st ed., ed. by Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf, vol. 1, Part A. Elsevier
[Only Sections 1 and 2 are required
*Partha Dasgupta and Debraj Ray. 1986. “Inequality as a Determinant of Malnutrition and
Unemployment: Theory”. The Economic Journal 384:1011–1034
Phillipe Aghion and Patrick Bolton. 1997. “A Theory of Trickle-Down Growth and
Development”. Review of Economic Studies 64:151–172
*Aart Kraay and David McKenzie. 2014. “Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the
Evidence”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 28:127–148
John Strauss and Duncan Thomas. 1995. “Human resources: Empirical modeling of household
and family decisions”. In Handbook of development economics, ed. by Jere Behrman and T. N.
Srinivasan, 3:1883– 2023. Elsevier [Only Section 2 is required]
John Strauss and Duncan Thomas. 1998. “Health, nutrition, and economic development”.
Journal of Economic Literature 36 (2): 766–817
Topic 3: Returns to Investment
*de Mel, Suresh, David McKenzie and Chris Woodruff, 2008. “Returns to Capital in Microenterprises:
Evidence from a Field Experiment” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, no. 4: 1329-1372
*Banerjee, Abhijit V., Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo and Matthew O. Jackson, 2013. “The Diffusion
of Microfinance” Science 341: 1236498
Foster, Andrew D., and Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2010. “Microeconomics of Technology Adoption” Annual
Review of Economics 2: 395-424. [don’t worry if some of the maths is a bit tough]
Topic 4: Time Preference and Credit
*Ghatak, Maitreesh, and Timothy W. Guinnane, 1999. “The Economics of Lending With Joint Liability”
Journal of Development Economics 60: 195-228.
Cull, Robert, Asli Demirguc¸-Kunt and Jonathan Morduch (2009). ¨ “Microfinance Meets the Market”
Journal of Economic Perspectives 23, no. 1: 167-192.
*Banerjee, Abhijit V., Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennester, and Cynthia Kinnan (2015) “The Miracle of
Microfinance: Evidence from a Randomised Evaluation” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
7, no. 1: 22-53.
Robert Cull, Asli Asli Demirgu¨c¸-Kunt, and Jonathan Morduch. 2009. “Microfinance meets the
market”. Journal of Economic perspectives 23 (1): 167–192
Jonathan De Quidt, Thiemo Fetzer, and Maitreesh Ghatak. 2016. “Group lending without joint
liability”. Journal of Development Economics 121:217–236
Erica Field, Rohini Pande, John Papp, and Natalia Rigol. 2013. “Does the classic microfinance
model discourage entrepreneurship among the poor? Experimental evidence from India”.
American Economic Review 103 (6): 2196–2226
Topic 5: Insurance
*Cole, Shawn, and Wentao Xiong (2017). “Agricultural Insurance and Economic Development” Annual
Review of Economics 9: 235-262.
Townsend, R. (1994). Risk and Insurance in Village India. Econometrica, 62(3), 539-591.
doi:10.2307/2951659
*Townsend, Robert (1995). “Consumption Insurance: An Evaluation of Risk-Bearing Systems in Low-
Income Economies” Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 3: 83-102
Christopher Udry. 1994. “Risk and insurance in a rural credit market: An empirical investigation
in northern Nigeria”. Review of Economic Studies 61 (3): 495–526
Lorenzo Casaburi and Rocco Macchiavello. 2015. “Loyalty, Exit, and Enforcement: Evidence
from a Kenyan dairy cooperative”. American Economic Review 105 (5): 286–290
