ECON 306: Development Economics
BSS (Honours) third year, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka
Introduction to
ECON 306: Development Economics
Lecture by: Dr. Rubaiya Murshed
PhD and MPhil, Faculty of Education (Economics of Education), University of Cambridge
Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Dhaka
Introductions
▪ Briefly about myself
▪ My approach to teaching the course: Interactive
▪ No memorization-based rote-learning: The aim is for you to understand the
intuition and consequences of concepts, i.e., to understand ‘conceptually’
▪ More important to understand the intuition behind any model rather than the
nitty-gritty mathematics behind the model
▪ Goal: Teaching and learning ‘how to think’ and not just ‘what to think’
▪ A focus on the aspect of decolonization
Gameplan for the course
Big picture issues in economic development oriented
around 3 themes
Economic growth, inequality and development
Poverty, agriculture and nutrition
Demography, education and health
Focus will be on economic models and empirical ▪ Course outline and syllabus
predictions, but also thinking about real-world policy
implications ▪ Lesson plan (work-in-progress)
Whether investigating growth and inequality, poverty and
mental health, dualism and land reform, stature, gender
discrimination or economic demography, current research
demonstrates the many areas in which economic tools and
thinking can be applied
More research on development economics in the future!
Course outline
Topic 1. The Economics of Development
Topic 2. Growth Models: From Harrod-Domar to Solow-Swan
Topic 3. Inequality and Development
Topic 4. Poverty, Poverty Measurement and Poverty Traps
Topic 5. Agriculture: Dualistic Models and their Policy Relevance
Topic 6. Missing Markets in Agriculture: Land Reform and Productivity
Topic 7. Human Capital: Education, Health and the Standard of Living
Topic 8. Gender and Intra-Household Allocation
Topic 9. Economic Demography, Household Demand Model with applications, and Externalities to
Childbearing
Topic 10: Mortality, Missing Women and the Marriage Market
Topic 11. Population Ageing, Economics of Religion, Social Capital and Happiness
Topic 12. Democracy for development and the Role of Institutions
**The content of this course has been adapted from the ‘Themes in Development Economics’ course taught
by Professor Sriya Iyer at the undergraduate level of the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
Reference materials and slides
▪ No particular textbook
▪ Content from different textbooks and papers
➢ You are NOT expected to read every single article/chapter in detail
➢Required readings (starred)
➢Additional readings
▪ Google classroom
▪ Hard copy version for photocopying
Reference materials
▪ Main textbooks to be followed from time to time:
1. Ray, D. (1998). Development Economics, Oxford University Press.
2. Todaro, M. and Smith, S. (2011). Economic Development, 11th
Edition, Pearson Education, Addison Wesley.
▪ Journal articles and book chapters to be shared via google
classroom and/or as hard copy versions to photocopy
Reading an Article: Approach
• What is the big issue at stake in this paper?
• How does the author approach this issue? That is, how does s/he formulate the
problem to make it analytically tractable?
• What is the author’s argument?
• What model (explicit or implicit) underpins the paper?
• What evidence/data does the author offer in support of his/her arguments?
• What techniques does s/he use to analyze the data?
• What are the main results?
• What conclusions does the author draw from the results?
Marks distribution
1. Sessional: 50 marks
▪ Incourse/assignment: 20 marks
▪ Midterm: 30 marks
2. Final: 50 marks
Total: 100 marks
Exam questions format
▪ How to show me that you’ve learned from the course?
▪ What do I understand by ‘good’ student?
Class timings
▪ Sunday: 9.30 am- 10.50 am (Section A)
11 am-12.20 pm (Section B)
▪ Monday: 9.30 am- 10.50 am (Section B)
11 am-12.20 pm (Section A)
Office hours
▪ Sunday: 12.30 pm- 2 pm (1st room on the right in the left side of
the faculty rooms- the side opposite of the lifts)
▪ Monday: 12.30 pm-2 pm(1st room on the right in the left side of
the faculty rooms- the side opposite of the lifts)
Contact information
▪ Visit during office hours
▪ Email at:
[email protected]