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Academic Year: 2022/23

21948 - Economic Development


Teaching Plan Information

Academic Course:
2022/23
Academic Center:
304 - Faculty of Law and Economics
332 - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences
Study:
3041 - Double bachelor's degree programme in Law and Business Management and Administration / Economics
3324 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration
Subject:
21948 - Economic Development
Ambit:
---
Credits:
5.0
Course:
418 - Bachelor's degree in Economics: 4
418 - Bachelor's degree in Economics: 3
417 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration: 3
417 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration: 4
523 - Double bachelor's degree programme in Law and Business Management and Administration / Economics: 6
Teaching languages:
Theory: Group 1: English
Seminar: Group 101: English
Group 102: English
Teachers:
Katerina Chara Papioti
Teaching Period:
Third quarter
Schedule:
Go to Timetable query

Presentation

NOTA: L'assignació docent d'aquesta assignatura està pendent, per tant tot i que la descripció de l'assignatura no variarà, altres aspectes d'aquest PDA poden canviar un cop acabada l'assignació docent. 
 
NOTE: The teaching assignment for this course is pending, therefore, even if the course description will not change, other aspects of this syllabus may be different once the teaching assignment has been finalized.
 

 

Part 1: Marian Meller (email: marian.meller@upf.edu)

Part 2: Sara Giunti (email: sara.giunti@unimib.it )

(Office hours: by appointment)

The first part of the course discusses selected topics in micro development economics, with the objective to understand key challenges in development, potential solutions, and the economic behavior of the poor at household and community levels. The material covered in class includes experimental studies (randomized controlled trials) that seek to provide evidence on 'what works' in improving development outcomes in microfinance and technology adoption, and health and nutrition, as well as quasi-experimental and other studies on humanitarian crises and aid.

The second part of the course first examines the literature on education, discussing returns to educational capital and interventions that can support children’s learning achievements. It then focuses on the macro determinants of development by examining different potential explanations of disparities in development levels across countries, including geography, institutions, and culture. The review of existing evidence will discuss different empirical methods to study these topics, including randomized controlled trials, difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, etc.

Associated skills

  • Team work capabilites: participating actively in different tasks and negotiating in order to reach group consensus.
  • Active participation in lectures and seminars.
  • Ability to conduct independent research with high-quality data from developing countries.
  • Active and independent learning.
  • Creativity.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

  • Understand the key microeconomic issues facing countries at the earliest stages of development, including poverty; poor access to capital, health care and education; humanitarian crises, etc.
  • Understand selected macroeconomic issues facing countries at the earliest stages of development, such as geography and institutions.
  • Apply economic models to practical economic issues of development and explain the different obstacles that developing economies face.
  • Assess the importance of economic theories and models in helping to formulate policies and development interventions.
  • Demonstrate that they have learned to identify relevant literature to approach this information critically and to address key questions on development from a microeconomic and macroeconomic perspective.
  • Learn a number of methodological issues that are essential to study and understand such topics empirically, including in the context of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). These issues are very important for what is now often called “evidence-based policy”, that is, development policy that is based on solid empirical evidence on “what works” in the quest for desirable development outcomes.
  • Demonstrate ability to conduct independent research with high-quality data from developing countries.

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 1: No Poverty

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

SDG 4: Quality Education

SDG 5: Gender Equality

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

Prerequisites

Please note that this is not an introductory course. Previous knowledge of macroeconomics and econometrics are required.

 

Contents

Part 1 - Marian Meller

A. Introduction

B. Microfinance, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Adoption

C. Health and Nutrition

D. Humanitarian Crises and Aid

 

Part 2 - Sara Giunti

A. Education

B. Long-term Drivers of Development: Geography, Institutions, and Culture 

Teaching Methods

Theoretical lectures and seminar sessions.

 

Evaluation

NOTA: L'assignació docent d'aquesta assignatura està pendent, per tant tot i que la descripció de l'assignatura no variarà, altres aspectes d'aquest PDA poden canviar un cop acabada l'assignació docent. 
 
NOTE: The teaching assignment for this course is pending, therefore, even if the course description will not change, other aspects of this syllabus may be different once the teaching assignment has been finalized.
 

Assessment

Part 1 - Marian Meller

  • Final exam (40 % of the course grade)
  • Group presentation of a paper from the syllabus in the seminars (10 % of the course grade)

Part 2 - Sara Giunti

  • Final exam (40 % of the course grade)
  • Group project solving a problem set using Stata software (10% of the course grade)

The final exam will cover both parts of the course.

The re-sit exam is only an available option if the student has participated in the continuous evaluation and has failed the first exam. Students with no participation in the continuous evaluation or not attending the first exam will not be able to take the re-sit exam.

Bibliography and information resources

 

Reading List (Part 1 of the Course)

Note: The reading list for Part 1 of this course is divided into compulsory bibliography, which will be covered in class, and optional readings. The compulsory bibliography includes three journal articles and a working paper, as well as three chapters from the textbook

Banerjee, A. V. and E. Duflo (2011): “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty”; New York: Public Affairs.

The articles from the optional bibliography that may be selected for presentations in the seminar sessions are indicated in Aula Global.

 

A. INTRODUCTION

Compulsory bibliography:

Duflo, E. and A.V. Banerjee (2007): “The Economic Lives of the Poor”. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(1): 141-168.

Other bibliography:

Banerjee A. and E. Duflo (2009): "The Experimental Approach to Development Economics", Annual Review of Economics, 1(1), 151-178.

Deaton, A. (2006): “Measuring Poverty”. In: A.V. Banerjee, R. Benabou, and D. Mookherjee (eds): Understanding Poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Duflo, E., R. Glennerster, and M. Kremer (2008): “Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit.” In: T. Schultz and J. Strauss (eds.): Handbook of Development Economics. Vol. 4. Amsterdam and New York: North Holland.

 

B. MICROFINANCE, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

 

Compulsory bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 9: Reluctant Entrepreneurs (pp. 205-234)

Poor Economics, Chapter 7: The Men from Kabul and the Eunuchs of India: The (not so) Simple Economics of Lending to the Poor (pp. 157 -181)

Deutschmann, Joshua, Tanguy Bernard, and Ouambi Yameogo (2021): “Contracting and quality upgrading: Evidence from an experiment in Senegal.” Working Paper. Latest version: May 2021.

Other bibliography:

Attanasio, O., B. Augsburg, R. de Haas, E. Fitzsimons, and H. Harmgart (2015): “The Impacts of Microfinance: Evidence from Joint Liability Lending in Mongolia”. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7(1): 90-122.

Bulte, E., R. Lensink, and N. Vu (2016): “Do Gender and Business Trainings Affect Business Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from Vietnam”. Management Science, 63(9): 2773-3145.

Burgess, R., and R. Pande (2005): “Do Rural Banks Matter? Evidence from the Indian Social Banking Experiment.” American Economic Review, 95(3): 780-795

Drexler, A., G. Fischer, and A. Schoar (2014): “Keeping it Simple: Financial Literacy and Rules of Thumb”. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 6(2): 1-31.

Gine, Xavier, and Dean Yang (2009): "Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption: Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi." Journal of Development Economics, 89(1): 1-11.

 

C. HEALTH AND NUTRITION

Compulsory bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 3: Low-Hanging Fruit for Better (Global) Health? (pp.41-70)

Banerjee, A.V., E. Duflo, R. Glennerster and D. Kothari (2010): “Improving immunisa-tion coverage in rural India: clustered randomised controlled evaluation of immuni-sation campaigns with and without incentives. British Medical Journal 340: c2220. Replace with supply-side Covid study.

Dupas, P, (2009): “What Matters (and What Does Not) in Households’ Decision to Invest in Malaria Prevention”. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 99(2): 224-230.

Other bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 2: A Billion Hungry People (pp. 19-40)

Baird, S., J. Hicks, M. Kremer, and E. Miguel (2016): "Worms at Work: Long-run Impacts of Child Health Gains", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(4), 1637-1680.

Das, J. and J. Hammer (2007): "Money for nothing. The dire straits of medical practice in Delhi, India". Journal of Development Economics, 83(1): 1-36.

Dupas, P. (2011): “Do Teenagers Respond to HIV Risk Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya”. American Economic Journal: Appl. Economics, 3(1): 1-34.

Field, E., O. Robles, and M. Torero (2009): "Iodine deficiency and schooling attain-ment in Tanzania." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(4): 140-169.

Strauss, J. and D. Thomas (2008): "Health over the life course". In: T. Paul Schultz and John Strauss (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics Vol. 4, Chapter 54, 3375-3474, 2008, Elsevier Press: North-Holland.

Subramanian, S., and Angus Deaton (1996): "The Demand for Food and Calories." Journal of Political Economy, 104(1): 133-162.

Thornton, R., L. Hatt, E. Field, M. Islam, F. Solís Diaz, and M. Azucena González (2010): “Social Security Health Insurance for the Informal Sector in Nicaragua: A Randomized Evaluation”. Health Economics, 19: 181-206.

 

D. HUMANITARIAN CRISES AND AID

Compulsory bibliography:

None.

Other Bibliography:

Alloush, M., J. E. Taylor, A. Gupta, R.I., Rojas Valdes, E. Gonzalez-Estrada (2017): “Economic Life in Refugee Camps”. World Development, 95: 334-347.

Blattman, C., and J. Annan (2010): “The Consequences of Child Soldiering”. Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4): 882-898.

Blattman, C., and J. Annan (2016): “Can Employment Reduce Lawlessness and Rebellion? A Field Experiment with High-Risk Men in a Fragile State”. American Political Science Review, 110(1): 1-17.

Dercon, S., and C. Porter (2014): “Live aid revisited: long-term impacts of the 1984 Ethiopian famine on children”. Journal of the European Economic Association, 12(4): 927-948.

Gilligan, D.O., and J. Hoddinott (2007): “Is There Persistence in the Impact of Emergency Food Aid? Evidence on Consumption, Food Security, and Assets in Rural Ethiopia”. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 89(2): 225–242.

MacPherson, C., and O. Sterck: “Empowering refugees through cash and agriculture: A regression discontinuity design”. Journal of Development Economics, 149: 102614.

 

Reading List (Part 2 of the Course)

Part A. Education

A1. Private and Public Returns to education

Required readings:

  • For a general intro of why education is important: World Bank (2018). World Development Report. Learning. Chapter 1. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018

 

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Patrinos H (2016). Estimating the return to schooling using the Mincer equation. IZA World of Labor doi: 10.15185/izawol.278
  • Duflo (2001). Schooling and labor market consequences of school construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an unusual policy experiment. American Economic Review 91(4)
  • Osilia, Una Okonkwo and Bridget Terry Long 2008. Does female schooling reduce fertility? Evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Development Economics 87(1),57-75

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Dechenes & Hotte (2019). Assessing the Effects of an Education Policy on Women's Well-being: Evidence from Benin: https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/psewpa/halshs- 02179704.html
  • Foster and Rosenzweig (1994). Technical change and human capital returns and investments: Evidence from the Green Revolution. American Economic Review Vol. 86, No. 4 (Sep., 1996), pp. 931-953 (23 pages)
  • Behrman, Jere R., Andrew D. Foster, Mark R. Rosenzweig, and Prem Vashishtha. 1999. “Women’s Schooling, Home Teaching, and Economic Growth.” Journal of Political Economy, 107(4): 682–715.
  • Rosenzweig, Mark. 2010. “Microeconomic Approaches to Development: Schooling, Learning and Growth”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 24(3):81-96.

 

A2. Educational Quality and What Can Be Done to Improve Learning

Required readings:

 

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Glewwe, P., Muralidharan, K. (2016). Improving education outcomes in developing countries: evidence, knowledge gaps, and policy implications. In Handbook of the Economics of Education 5. Only Sections 3, 4 and 5 required
  • Jensen, R. (2010). The (perceived) returns to education and the demand for schooling. Quaterly Journal of Economics
  • Baird, S., McIntosh, C., Ozler, B. (2011). Cash or condition? Evidence from a cash transfer experiment. Quaterly Journal of Economics
  • Banerjee, Cole, Duflo and Linden. 2007. “Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(3):1235-1264.

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials): 

  • Riley, E. (2019). Role models in movies: the impact of Queen of Katwe on students’ educational attainment
  • Bold, T., et al.,(2017). Enrollment without Learning: Teacher Effort, Knowledge, and Skill in Primary Schools in Africa. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  • Bold, T., et al. (2018). Experimental evidence on scaling up education reforms in Kenya. Journal of Public Economics
  • Banerjee, Banerji, Duflo, Glennerster and Khemani. 2009. “Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation of Education in India”. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2(1):1-30.
  • Duflo, Esther, Rema Hanna and Stephen Ryan. 2012. “Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School”. American Economic Review 102(4):1241-1278.
  • Banerjee, Abhijit, Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, Esther Duflo, Harini Kannan, Shobhini Mukherji, Marc Shotland, and Michael Walton. 2016. “Mainstreaming an effective intervention: Evidence from randomized evaluations of ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ in India.” NBER Working Paper No. 22746. https://www.nber.org/papers/w22746.
  • Evans and Mendez Acosta (2020). Education in Africa: What are we learning? Journal of African Economies. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/jae/article/30/1/13/5999001#sec10
  • Baird, S., McIntosh, C., Ozler, B. (2016). When the money runs out. Journal of Development Economics
  • Aurino, E., Gelli, A., Adamba, C., Osei-Akoto, I., Alderman, H. (2020) Food for thought? Large-scale experimental evidence of school feeding impacts on learning. Journal of Human Resources
  • Benhassine, et al. (2015). Turning a shove into a nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20130225

 

Part B. Long-term Drivers of Development

B1. It's All about Geography

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Diamond, Jared (2002), “Evolution, consequences and the future of plant and Animal domestication”, Nature, Vol. 418. Available at: http://wwwdata.forestry.oregonstate.edu/orb/BiotechClass/2004%20materials/2A- AG%20HIST/DiamondDomestication-2002-Nature01019.pdf
  • J. Sachs (2001). Tropical underdevelopment. NBER working paper. Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w8119

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials): 

  • Sachs,      Jeffrey,      “Institutions      Matter,      But      Not      for      Everything”      (2003) http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2003/06/pdf/sachs.pdf
  • Hibbs and Olsson (2004). Geography, biogeography, and why some countries are rich and others are poor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101
  • Faye, McArthur, Sachs and Snow (2004), “The Challenge Facing Landlocked Developing Countries, Journal of Human Development
  • Ashraf and Galor (2011). Dynamics and Stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch. The American Economic Review 101.
  • Mayshar, Moav, Neeman and Pascali (2015). Cereals, Appropriability and Hierarchy. CEPR Working Paper 10742.
  • Sanchez de la Sierra (2015). On the Origins of States: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo”, mimeo, Berkeley

 

B2. It’s the Institutions, Stupid!

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002), “The Reversal of Fortune”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (2001). “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Economic Development: An Empirical Investigation”, American Economic Review 91.
  • Melissa Dell (2010). “The persistent effects of Peru’s mining Mita”, Econometrica 78.
  • Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth Sokoloff. "Colonialism, Inequality and Long-Run Paths of Development." Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w11057
  • Henderson, Squires, Storeygard and Weil (2018). “The global distribution of economic activity: nature, history, and the role of trade”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 133.
  • Luigi Pascali (2016), “Banks and Development: Jewish Communities in the Italian Renaissance and Current Economic Performance”, The Review of Economics and Statistics.
  • Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2004). Institutions as the fundamental cause of long-run growth. NBER working paper.

B3. Culture, Gender Norms, and Long-run Development

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Nunn (2008). The long-term effects of Africa’s slave trade. Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(1).
  • Alesina, Giuliano, Nunn (2013). On the origins of gender roles: women and the plough. Quarterly Journal of Economics 128(1).

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Michalapoulous, Stelios and Elias Pappaioannou (2013), “National Institutions and Sub National Development in Africa”, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
  • Guiso, Sapienza, Zingales (2010). “Long Term Persistence”. NBER WP 14278.
  • Becker, Sascha and L. Woesmann (2009), “Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Interpretation of Protestant Economic History”, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
  • Giuliano, P. (2017). Gender: a historical perspective. NBER working paper. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23635


 

 

 

 


Academic Year: 2022/23

21948 - Economic Development


Teaching Plan Information

Academic Course:
2022/23
Academic Center:
304 - Faculty of Law and Economics
332 - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences
Study:
3041 - Double bachelor's degree programme in Law and Business Management and Administration / Economics
3324 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration
Subject:
21948 - Economic Development
Ambit:
---
Credits:
5.0
Course:
418 - Bachelor's degree in Economics: 4
418 - Bachelor's degree in Economics: 3
417 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration: 3
417 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration: 4
523 - Double bachelor's degree programme in Law and Business Management and Administration / Economics: 6
Teaching languages:
Theory: Group 1: English
Seminar: Group 101: English
Group 102: English
Teachers:
Katerina Chara Papioti
Teaching Period:
Third quarter
Schedule:
Go to Timetable query

Presentation

NOTA: L'assignació docent d'aquesta assignatura està pendent, per tant tot i que la descripció de l'assignatura no variarà, altres aspectes d'aquest PDA poden canviar un cop acabada l'assignació docent. 
 
NOTE: The teaching assignment for this course is pending, therefore, even if the course description will not change, other aspects of this syllabus may be different once the teaching assignment has been finalized.
 

 

Part 1: Marian Meller (email: marian.meller@upf.edu)

Part 2: Sara Giunti (email: sara.giunti@unimib.it )

(Office hours: by appointment)

The first part of the course discusses selected topics in micro development economics, with the objective to understand key challenges in development, potential solutions, and the economic behavior of the poor at household and community levels. The material covered in class includes experimental studies (randomized controlled trials) that seek to provide evidence on 'what works' in improving development outcomes in microfinance and technology adoption, and health and nutrition, as well as quasi-experimental and other studies on humanitarian crises and aid.

The second part of the course first examines the literature on education, discussing returns to educational capital and interventions that can support children’s learning achievements. It then focuses on the macro determinants of development by examining different potential explanations of disparities in development levels across countries, including geography, institutions, and culture. The review of existing evidence will discuss different empirical methods to study these topics, including randomized controlled trials, difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, etc.

Associated skills

  • Team work capabilites: participating actively in different tasks and negotiating in order to reach group consensus.
  • Active participation in lectures and seminars.
  • Ability to conduct independent research with high-quality data from developing countries.
  • Active and independent learning.
  • Creativity.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

  • Understand the key microeconomic issues facing countries at the earliest stages of development, including poverty; poor access to capital, health care and education; humanitarian crises, etc.
  • Understand selected macroeconomic issues facing countries at the earliest stages of development, such as geography and institutions.
  • Apply economic models to practical economic issues of development and explain the different obstacles that developing economies face.
  • Assess the importance of economic theories and models in helping to formulate policies and development interventions.
  • Demonstrate that they have learned to identify relevant literature to approach this information critically and to address key questions on development from a microeconomic and macroeconomic perspective.
  • Learn a number of methodological issues that are essential to study and understand such topics empirically, including in the context of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). These issues are very important for what is now often called “evidence-based policy”, that is, development policy that is based on solid empirical evidence on “what works” in the quest for desirable development outcomes.
  • Demonstrate ability to conduct independent research with high-quality data from developing countries.

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 1: No Poverty

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

SDG 4: Quality Education

SDG 5: Gender Equality

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

Prerequisites

Please note that this is not an introductory course. Previous knowledge of macroeconomics and econometrics are required.

 

Contents

Part 1 - Marian Meller

A. Introduction

B. Microfinance, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Adoption

C. Health and Nutrition

D. Humanitarian Crises and Aid

 

Part 2 - Sara Giunti

A. Education

B. Long-term Drivers of Development: Geography, Institutions, and Culture 

Teaching Methods

Theoretical lectures and seminar sessions.

 

Evaluation

NOTA: L'assignació docent d'aquesta assignatura està pendent, per tant tot i que la descripció de l'assignatura no variarà, altres aspectes d'aquest PDA poden canviar un cop acabada l'assignació docent. 
 
NOTE: The teaching assignment for this course is pending, therefore, even if the course description will not change, other aspects of this syllabus may be different once the teaching assignment has been finalized.
 

Assessment

Part 1 - Marian Meller

  • Final exam (40 % of the course grade)
  • Group presentation of a paper from the syllabus in the seminars (10 % of the course grade)

Part 2 - Sara Giunti

  • Final exam (40 % of the course grade)
  • Group project solving a problem set using Stata software (10% of the course grade)

The final exam will cover both parts of the course.

The re-sit exam is only an available option if the student has participated in the continuous evaluation and has failed the first exam. Students with no participation in the continuous evaluation or not attending the first exam will not be able to take the re-sit exam.

Bibliography and information resources

 

Reading List (Part 1 of the Course)

Note: The reading list for Part 1 of this course is divided into compulsory bibliography, which will be covered in class, and optional readings. The compulsory bibliography includes three journal articles and a working paper, as well as three chapters from the textbook

Banerjee, A. V. and E. Duflo (2011): “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty”; New York: Public Affairs.

The articles from the optional bibliography that may be selected for presentations in the seminar sessions are indicated in Aula Global.

 

A. INTRODUCTION

Compulsory bibliography:

Duflo, E. and A.V. Banerjee (2007): “The Economic Lives of the Poor”. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(1): 141-168.

Other bibliography:

Banerjee A. and E. Duflo (2009): "The Experimental Approach to Development Economics", Annual Review of Economics, 1(1), 151-178.

Deaton, A. (2006): “Measuring Poverty”. In: A.V. Banerjee, R. Benabou, and D. Mookherjee (eds): Understanding Poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Duflo, E., R. Glennerster, and M. Kremer (2008): “Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit.” In: T. Schultz and J. Strauss (eds.): Handbook of Development Economics. Vol. 4. Amsterdam and New York: North Holland.

 

B. MICROFINANCE, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

 

Compulsory bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 9: Reluctant Entrepreneurs (pp. 205-234)

Poor Economics, Chapter 7: The Men from Kabul and the Eunuchs of India: The (not so) Simple Economics of Lending to the Poor (pp. 157 -181)

Deutschmann, Joshua, Tanguy Bernard, and Ouambi Yameogo (2021): “Contracting and quality upgrading: Evidence from an experiment in Senegal.” Working Paper. Latest version: May 2021.

Other bibliography:

Attanasio, O., B. Augsburg, R. de Haas, E. Fitzsimons, and H. Harmgart (2015): “The Impacts of Microfinance: Evidence from Joint Liability Lending in Mongolia”. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7(1): 90-122.

Bulte, E., R. Lensink, and N. Vu (2016): “Do Gender and Business Trainings Affect Business Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from Vietnam”. Management Science, 63(9): 2773-3145.

Burgess, R., and R. Pande (2005): “Do Rural Banks Matter? Evidence from the Indian Social Banking Experiment.” American Economic Review, 95(3): 780-795

Drexler, A., G. Fischer, and A. Schoar (2014): “Keeping it Simple: Financial Literacy and Rules of Thumb”. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 6(2): 1-31.

Gine, Xavier, and Dean Yang (2009): "Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption: Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi." Journal of Development Economics, 89(1): 1-11.

 

C. HEALTH AND NUTRITION

Compulsory bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 3: Low-Hanging Fruit for Better (Global) Health? (pp.41-70)

Banerjee, A.V., E. Duflo, R. Glennerster and D. Kothari (2010): “Improving immunisa-tion coverage in rural India: clustered randomised controlled evaluation of immuni-sation campaigns with and without incentives. British Medical Journal 340: c2220. Replace with supply-side Covid study.

Dupas, P, (2009): “What Matters (and What Does Not) in Households’ Decision to Invest in Malaria Prevention”. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 99(2): 224-230.

Other bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 2: A Billion Hungry People (pp. 19-40)

Baird, S., J. Hicks, M. Kremer, and E. Miguel (2016): "Worms at Work: Long-run Impacts of Child Health Gains", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(4), 1637-1680.

Das, J. and J. Hammer (2007): "Money for nothing. The dire straits of medical practice in Delhi, India". Journal of Development Economics, 83(1): 1-36.

Dupas, P. (2011): “Do Teenagers Respond to HIV Risk Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya”. American Economic Journal: Appl. Economics, 3(1): 1-34.

Field, E., O. Robles, and M. Torero (2009): "Iodine deficiency and schooling attain-ment in Tanzania." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(4): 140-169.

Strauss, J. and D. Thomas (2008): "Health over the life course". In: T. Paul Schultz and John Strauss (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics Vol. 4, Chapter 54, 3375-3474, 2008, Elsevier Press: North-Holland.

Subramanian, S., and Angus Deaton (1996): "The Demand for Food and Calories." Journal of Political Economy, 104(1): 133-162.

Thornton, R., L. Hatt, E. Field, M. Islam, F. Solís Diaz, and M. Azucena González (2010): “Social Security Health Insurance for the Informal Sector in Nicaragua: A Randomized Evaluation”. Health Economics, 19: 181-206.

 

D. HUMANITARIAN CRISES AND AID

Compulsory bibliography:

None.

Other Bibliography:

Alloush, M., J. E. Taylor, A. Gupta, R.I., Rojas Valdes, E. Gonzalez-Estrada (2017): “Economic Life in Refugee Camps”. World Development, 95: 334-347.

Blattman, C., and J. Annan (2010): “The Consequences of Child Soldiering”. Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4): 882-898.

Blattman, C., and J. Annan (2016): “Can Employment Reduce Lawlessness and Rebellion? A Field Experiment with High-Risk Men in a Fragile State”. American Political Science Review, 110(1): 1-17.

Dercon, S., and C. Porter (2014): “Live aid revisited: long-term impacts of the 1984 Ethiopian famine on children”. Journal of the European Economic Association, 12(4): 927-948.

Gilligan, D.O., and J. Hoddinott (2007): “Is There Persistence in the Impact of Emergency Food Aid? Evidence on Consumption, Food Security, and Assets in Rural Ethiopia”. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 89(2): 225–242.

MacPherson, C., and O. Sterck: “Empowering refugees through cash and agriculture: A regression discontinuity design”. Journal of Development Economics, 149: 102614.

 

Reading List (Part 2 of the Course)

Part A. Education

A1. Private and Public Returns to education

Required readings:

  • For a general intro of why education is important: World Bank (2018). World Development Report. Learning. Chapter 1. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018

 

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Patrinos H (2016). Estimating the return to schooling using the Mincer equation. IZA World of Labor doi: 10.15185/izawol.278
  • Duflo (2001). Schooling and labor market consequences of school construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an unusual policy experiment. American Economic Review 91(4)
  • Osilia, Una Okonkwo and Bridget Terry Long 2008. Does female schooling reduce fertility? Evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Development Economics 87(1),57-75

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Dechenes & Hotte (2019). Assessing the Effects of an Education Policy on Women's Well-being: Evidence from Benin: https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/psewpa/halshs- 02179704.html
  • Foster and Rosenzweig (1994). Technical change and human capital returns and investments: Evidence from the Green Revolution. American Economic Review Vol. 86, No. 4 (Sep., 1996), pp. 931-953 (23 pages)
  • Behrman, Jere R., Andrew D. Foster, Mark R. Rosenzweig, and Prem Vashishtha. 1999. “Women’s Schooling, Home Teaching, and Economic Growth.” Journal of Political Economy, 107(4): 682–715.
  • Rosenzweig, Mark. 2010. “Microeconomic Approaches to Development: Schooling, Learning and Growth”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 24(3):81-96.

 

A2. Educational Quality and What Can Be Done to Improve Learning

Required readings:

 

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Glewwe, P., Muralidharan, K. (2016). Improving education outcomes in developing countries: evidence, knowledge gaps, and policy implications. In Handbook of the Economics of Education 5. Only Sections 3, 4 and 5 required
  • Jensen, R. (2010). The (perceived) returns to education and the demand for schooling. Quaterly Journal of Economics
  • Baird, S., McIntosh, C., Ozler, B. (2011). Cash or condition? Evidence from a cash transfer experiment. Quaterly Journal of Economics
  • Banerjee, Cole, Duflo and Linden. 2007. “Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(3):1235-1264.

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials): 

  • Riley, E. (2019). Role models in movies: the impact of Queen of Katwe on students’ educational attainment
  • Bold, T., et al.,(2017). Enrollment without Learning: Teacher Effort, Knowledge, and Skill in Primary Schools in Africa. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  • Bold, T., et al. (2018). Experimental evidence on scaling up education reforms in Kenya. Journal of Public Economics
  • Banerjee, Banerji, Duflo, Glennerster and Khemani. 2009. “Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation of Education in India”. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2(1):1-30.
  • Duflo, Esther, Rema Hanna and Stephen Ryan. 2012. “Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School”. American Economic Review 102(4):1241-1278.
  • Banerjee, Abhijit, Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, Esther Duflo, Harini Kannan, Shobhini Mukherji, Marc Shotland, and Michael Walton. 2016. “Mainstreaming an effective intervention: Evidence from randomized evaluations of ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ in India.” NBER Working Paper No. 22746. https://www.nber.org/papers/w22746.
  • Evans and Mendez Acosta (2020). Education in Africa: What are we learning? Journal of African Economies. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/jae/article/30/1/13/5999001#sec10
  • Baird, S., McIntosh, C., Ozler, B. (2016). When the money runs out. Journal of Development Economics
  • Aurino, E., Gelli, A., Adamba, C., Osei-Akoto, I., Alderman, H. (2020) Food for thought? Large-scale experimental evidence of school feeding impacts on learning. Journal of Human Resources
  • Benhassine, et al. (2015). Turning a shove into a nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20130225

 

Part B. Long-term Drivers of Development

B1. It's All about Geography

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Diamond, Jared (2002), “Evolution, consequences and the future of plant and Animal domestication”, Nature, Vol. 418. Available at: http://wwwdata.forestry.oregonstate.edu/orb/BiotechClass/2004%20materials/2A- AG%20HIST/DiamondDomestication-2002-Nature01019.pdf
  • J. Sachs (2001). Tropical underdevelopment. NBER working paper. Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w8119

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials): 

  • Sachs,      Jeffrey,      “Institutions      Matter,      But      Not      for      Everything”      (2003) http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2003/06/pdf/sachs.pdf
  • Hibbs and Olsson (2004). Geography, biogeography, and why some countries are rich and others are poor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101
  • Faye, McArthur, Sachs and Snow (2004), “The Challenge Facing Landlocked Developing Countries, Journal of Human Development
  • Ashraf and Galor (2011). Dynamics and Stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch. The American Economic Review 101.
  • Mayshar, Moav, Neeman and Pascali (2015). Cereals, Appropriability and Hierarchy. CEPR Working Paper 10742.
  • Sanchez de la Sierra (2015). On the Origins of States: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo”, mimeo, Berkeley

 

B2. It’s the Institutions, Stupid!

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002), “The Reversal of Fortune”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (2001). “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Economic Development: An Empirical Investigation”, American Economic Review 91.
  • Melissa Dell (2010). “The persistent effects of Peru’s mining Mita”, Econometrica 78.
  • Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth Sokoloff. "Colonialism, Inequality and Long-Run Paths of Development." Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w11057
  • Henderson, Squires, Storeygard and Weil (2018). “The global distribution of economic activity: nature, history, and the role of trade”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 133.
  • Luigi Pascali (2016), “Banks and Development: Jewish Communities in the Italian Renaissance and Current Economic Performance”, The Review of Economics and Statistics.
  • Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2004). Institutions as the fundamental cause of long-run growth. NBER working paper.

B3. Culture, Gender Norms, and Long-run Development

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Nunn (2008). The long-term effects of Africa’s slave trade. Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(1).
  • Alesina, Giuliano, Nunn (2013). On the origins of gender roles: women and the plough. Quarterly Journal of Economics 128(1).

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Michalapoulous, Stelios and Elias Pappaioannou (2013), “National Institutions and Sub National Development in Africa”, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
  • Guiso, Sapienza, Zingales (2010). “Long Term Persistence”. NBER WP 14278.
  • Becker, Sascha and L. Woesmann (2009), “Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Interpretation of Protestant Economic History”, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
  • Giuliano, P. (2017). Gender: a historical perspective. NBER working paper. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23635


 

 

 

 


Academic Year: 2022/23

21948 - Economic Development


Teaching Plan Information

Academic Course:
2022/23
Academic Center:
304 - Faculty of Law and Economics
332 - Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences
Study:
3041 - Double bachelor's degree programme in Law and Business Management and Administration / Economics
3324 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration
Subject:
21948 - Economic Development
Ambit:
---
Credits:
5.0
Course:
418 - Bachelor's degree in Economics: 4
418 - Bachelor's degree in Economics: 3
417 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration: 3
417 - Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Administration: 4
523 - Double bachelor's degree programme in Law and Business Management and Administration / Economics: 6
Teaching languages:
Theory: Group 1: English
Seminar: Group 101: English
Group 102: English
Teachers:
Katerina Chara Papioti
Teaching Period:
Third quarter
Schedule:
Go to Timetable query

Presentation

NOTA: L'assignació docent d'aquesta assignatura està pendent, per tant tot i que la descripció de l'assignatura no variarà, altres aspectes d'aquest PDA poden canviar un cop acabada l'assignació docent. 
 
NOTE: The teaching assignment for this course is pending, therefore, even if the course description will not change, other aspects of this syllabus may be different once the teaching assignment has been finalized.
 

 

Part 1: Marian Meller (email: marian.meller@upf.edu)

Part 2: Sara Giunti (email: sara.giunti@unimib.it )

(Office hours: by appointment)

The first part of the course discusses selected topics in micro development economics, with the objective to understand key challenges in development, potential solutions, and the economic behavior of the poor at household and community levels. The material covered in class includes experimental studies (randomized controlled trials) that seek to provide evidence on 'what works' in improving development outcomes in microfinance and technology adoption, and health and nutrition, as well as quasi-experimental and other studies on humanitarian crises and aid.

The second part of the course first examines the literature on education, discussing returns to educational capital and interventions that can support children’s learning achievements. It then focuses on the macro determinants of development by examining different potential explanations of disparities in development levels across countries, including geography, institutions, and culture. The review of existing evidence will discuss different empirical methods to study these topics, including randomized controlled trials, difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, etc.

Associated skills

  • Team work capabilites: participating actively in different tasks and negotiating in order to reach group consensus.
  • Active participation in lectures and seminars.
  • Ability to conduct independent research with high-quality data from developing countries.
  • Active and independent learning.
  • Creativity.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

  • Understand the key microeconomic issues facing countries at the earliest stages of development, including poverty; poor access to capital, health care and education; humanitarian crises, etc.
  • Understand selected macroeconomic issues facing countries at the earliest stages of development, such as geography and institutions.
  • Apply economic models to practical economic issues of development and explain the different obstacles that developing economies face.
  • Assess the importance of economic theories and models in helping to formulate policies and development interventions.
  • Demonstrate that they have learned to identify relevant literature to approach this information critically and to address key questions on development from a microeconomic and macroeconomic perspective.
  • Learn a number of methodological issues that are essential to study and understand such topics empirically, including in the context of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). These issues are very important for what is now often called “evidence-based policy”, that is, development policy that is based on solid empirical evidence on “what works” in the quest for desirable development outcomes.
  • Demonstrate ability to conduct independent research with high-quality data from developing countries.

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 1: No Poverty

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

SDG 4: Quality Education

SDG 5: Gender Equality

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

Prerequisites

Please note that this is not an introductory course. Previous knowledge of macroeconomics and econometrics are required.

 

Contents

Part 1 - Marian Meller

A. Introduction

B. Microfinance, Entrepreneurship, and Technology Adoption

C. Health and Nutrition

D. Humanitarian Crises and Aid

 

Part 2 - Sara Giunti

A. Education

B. Long-term Drivers of Development: Geography, Institutions, and Culture 

Teaching Methods

Theoretical lectures and seminar sessions.

 

Evaluation

NOTA: L'assignació docent d'aquesta assignatura està pendent, per tant tot i que la descripció de l'assignatura no variarà, altres aspectes d'aquest PDA poden canviar un cop acabada l'assignació docent. 
 
NOTE: The teaching assignment for this course is pending, therefore, even if the course description will not change, other aspects of this syllabus may be different once the teaching assignment has been finalized.
 

Assessment

Part 1 - Marian Meller

  • Final exam (40 % of the course grade)
  • Group presentation of a paper from the syllabus in the seminars (10 % of the course grade)

Part 2 - Sara Giunti

  • Final exam (40 % of the course grade)
  • Group project solving a problem set using Stata software (10% of the course grade)

The final exam will cover both parts of the course.

The re-sit exam is only an available option if the student has participated in the continuous evaluation and has failed the first exam. Students with no participation in the continuous evaluation or not attending the first exam will not be able to take the re-sit exam.

Bibliography and information resources

 

Reading List (Part 1 of the Course)

Note: The reading list for Part 1 of this course is divided into compulsory bibliography, which will be covered in class, and optional readings. The compulsory bibliography includes three journal articles and a working paper, as well as three chapters from the textbook

Banerjee, A. V. and E. Duflo (2011): “Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty”; New York: Public Affairs.

The articles from the optional bibliography that may be selected for presentations in the seminar sessions are indicated in Aula Global.

 

A. INTRODUCTION

Compulsory bibliography:

Duflo, E. and A.V. Banerjee (2007): “The Economic Lives of the Poor”. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21(1): 141-168.

Other bibliography:

Banerjee A. and E. Duflo (2009): "The Experimental Approach to Development Economics", Annual Review of Economics, 1(1), 151-178.

Deaton, A. (2006): “Measuring Poverty”. In: A.V. Banerjee, R. Benabou, and D. Mookherjee (eds): Understanding Poverty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Duflo, E., R. Glennerster, and M. Kremer (2008): “Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit.” In: T. Schultz and J. Strauss (eds.): Handbook of Development Economics. Vol. 4. Amsterdam and New York: North Holland.

 

B. MICROFINANCE, ENTREPRENEURSHIP, AND TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

 

Compulsory bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 9: Reluctant Entrepreneurs (pp. 205-234)

Poor Economics, Chapter 7: The Men from Kabul and the Eunuchs of India: The (not so) Simple Economics of Lending to the Poor (pp. 157 -181)

Deutschmann, Joshua, Tanguy Bernard, and Ouambi Yameogo (2021): “Contracting and quality upgrading: Evidence from an experiment in Senegal.” Working Paper. Latest version: May 2021.

Other bibliography:

Attanasio, O., B. Augsburg, R. de Haas, E. Fitzsimons, and H. Harmgart (2015): “The Impacts of Microfinance: Evidence from Joint Liability Lending in Mongolia”. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7(1): 90-122.

Bulte, E., R. Lensink, and N. Vu (2016): “Do Gender and Business Trainings Affect Business Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from Vietnam”. Management Science, 63(9): 2773-3145.

Burgess, R., and R. Pande (2005): “Do Rural Banks Matter? Evidence from the Indian Social Banking Experiment.” American Economic Review, 95(3): 780-795

Drexler, A., G. Fischer, and A. Schoar (2014): “Keeping it Simple: Financial Literacy and Rules of Thumb”. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 6(2): 1-31.

Gine, Xavier, and Dean Yang (2009): "Insurance, Credit, and Technology Adoption: Field Experimental Evidence from Malawi." Journal of Development Economics, 89(1): 1-11.

 

C. HEALTH AND NUTRITION

Compulsory bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 3: Low-Hanging Fruit for Better (Global) Health? (pp.41-70)

Banerjee, A.V., E. Duflo, R. Glennerster and D. Kothari (2010): “Improving immunisa-tion coverage in rural India: clustered randomised controlled evaluation of immuni-sation campaigns with and without incentives. British Medical Journal 340: c2220. Replace with supply-side Covid study.

Dupas, P, (2009): “What Matters (and What Does Not) in Households’ Decision to Invest in Malaria Prevention”. American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 99(2): 224-230.

Other bibliography:

Poor Economics, Chapter 2: A Billion Hungry People (pp. 19-40)

Baird, S., J. Hicks, M. Kremer, and E. Miguel (2016): "Worms at Work: Long-run Impacts of Child Health Gains", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(4), 1637-1680.

Das, J. and J. Hammer (2007): "Money for nothing. The dire straits of medical practice in Delhi, India". Journal of Development Economics, 83(1): 1-36.

Dupas, P. (2011): “Do Teenagers Respond to HIV Risk Information? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya”. American Economic Journal: Appl. Economics, 3(1): 1-34.

Field, E., O. Robles, and M. Torero (2009): "Iodine deficiency and schooling attain-ment in Tanzania." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(4): 140-169.

Strauss, J. and D. Thomas (2008): "Health over the life course". In: T. Paul Schultz and John Strauss (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics Vol. 4, Chapter 54, 3375-3474, 2008, Elsevier Press: North-Holland.

Subramanian, S., and Angus Deaton (1996): "The Demand for Food and Calories." Journal of Political Economy, 104(1): 133-162.

Thornton, R., L. Hatt, E. Field, M. Islam, F. Solís Diaz, and M. Azucena González (2010): “Social Security Health Insurance for the Informal Sector in Nicaragua: A Randomized Evaluation”. Health Economics, 19: 181-206.

 

D. HUMANITARIAN CRISES AND AID

Compulsory bibliography:

None.

Other Bibliography:

Alloush, M., J. E. Taylor, A. Gupta, R.I., Rojas Valdes, E. Gonzalez-Estrada (2017): “Economic Life in Refugee Camps”. World Development, 95: 334-347.

Blattman, C., and J. Annan (2010): “The Consequences of Child Soldiering”. Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4): 882-898.

Blattman, C., and J. Annan (2016): “Can Employment Reduce Lawlessness and Rebellion? A Field Experiment with High-Risk Men in a Fragile State”. American Political Science Review, 110(1): 1-17.

Dercon, S., and C. Porter (2014): “Live aid revisited: long-term impacts of the 1984 Ethiopian famine on children”. Journal of the European Economic Association, 12(4): 927-948.

Gilligan, D.O., and J. Hoddinott (2007): “Is There Persistence in the Impact of Emergency Food Aid? Evidence on Consumption, Food Security, and Assets in Rural Ethiopia”. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 89(2): 225–242.

MacPherson, C., and O. Sterck: “Empowering refugees through cash and agriculture: A regression discontinuity design”. Journal of Development Economics, 149: 102614.

 

Reading List (Part 2 of the Course)

Part A. Education

A1. Private and Public Returns to education

Required readings:

  • For a general intro of why education is important: World Bank (2018). World Development Report. Learning. Chapter 1. Available at: https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018

 

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Patrinos H (2016). Estimating the return to schooling using the Mincer equation. IZA World of Labor doi: 10.15185/izawol.278
  • Duflo (2001). Schooling and labor market consequences of school construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an unusual policy experiment. American Economic Review 91(4)
  • Osilia, Una Okonkwo and Bridget Terry Long 2008. Does female schooling reduce fertility? Evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Development Economics 87(1),57-75

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Dechenes & Hotte (2019). Assessing the Effects of an Education Policy on Women's Well-being: Evidence from Benin: https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/psewpa/halshs- 02179704.html
  • Foster and Rosenzweig (1994). Technical change and human capital returns and investments: Evidence from the Green Revolution. American Economic Review Vol. 86, No. 4 (Sep., 1996), pp. 931-953 (23 pages)
  • Behrman, Jere R., Andrew D. Foster, Mark R. Rosenzweig, and Prem Vashishtha. 1999. “Women’s Schooling, Home Teaching, and Economic Growth.” Journal of Political Economy, 107(4): 682–715.
  • Rosenzweig, Mark. 2010. “Microeconomic Approaches to Development: Schooling, Learning and Growth”. Journal of Economic Perspectives 24(3):81-96.

 

A2. Educational Quality and What Can Be Done to Improve Learning

Required readings:

 

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Glewwe, P., Muralidharan, K. (2016). Improving education outcomes in developing countries: evidence, knowledge gaps, and policy implications. In Handbook of the Economics of Education 5. Only Sections 3, 4 and 5 required
  • Jensen, R. (2010). The (perceived) returns to education and the demand for schooling. Quaterly Journal of Economics
  • Baird, S., McIntosh, C., Ozler, B. (2011). Cash or condition? Evidence from a cash transfer experiment. Quaterly Journal of Economics
  • Banerjee, Cole, Duflo and Linden. 2007. “Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(3):1235-1264.

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials): 

  • Riley, E. (2019). Role models in movies: the impact of Queen of Katwe on students’ educational attainment
  • Bold, T., et al.,(2017). Enrollment without Learning: Teacher Effort, Knowledge, and Skill in Primary Schools in Africa. Journal of Economic Perspectives
  • Bold, T., et al. (2018). Experimental evidence on scaling up education reforms in Kenya. Journal of Public Economics
  • Banerjee, Banerji, Duflo, Glennerster and Khemani. 2009. “Pitfalls of Participatory Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation of Education in India”. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 2(1):1-30.
  • Duflo, Esther, Rema Hanna and Stephen Ryan. 2012. “Incentives Work: Getting Teachers to Come to School”. American Economic Review 102(4):1241-1278.
  • Banerjee, Abhijit, Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, Esther Duflo, Harini Kannan, Shobhini Mukherji, Marc Shotland, and Michael Walton. 2016. “Mainstreaming an effective intervention: Evidence from randomized evaluations of ‘Teaching at the Right Level’ in India.” NBER Working Paper No. 22746. https://www.nber.org/papers/w22746.
  • Evans and Mendez Acosta (2020). Education in Africa: What are we learning? Journal of African Economies. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/jae/article/30/1/13/5999001#sec10
  • Baird, S., McIntosh, C., Ozler, B. (2016). When the money runs out. Journal of Development Economics
  • Aurino, E., Gelli, A., Adamba, C., Osei-Akoto, I., Alderman, H. (2020) Food for thought? Large-scale experimental evidence of school feeding impacts on learning. Journal of Human Resources
  • Benhassine, et al. (2015). Turning a shove into a nudge? A "Labeled Cash Transfer" for Education. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20130225

 

Part B. Long-term Drivers of Development

B1. It's All about Geography

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Diamond, Jared (2002), “Evolution, consequences and the future of plant and Animal domestication”, Nature, Vol. 418. Available at: http://wwwdata.forestry.oregonstate.edu/orb/BiotechClass/2004%20materials/2A- AG%20HIST/DiamondDomestication-2002-Nature01019.pdf
  • J. Sachs (2001). Tropical underdevelopment. NBER working paper. Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w8119

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials): 

  • Sachs,      Jeffrey,      “Institutions      Matter,      But      Not      for      Everything”      (2003) http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2003/06/pdf/sachs.pdf
  • Hibbs and Olsson (2004). Geography, biogeography, and why some countries are rich and others are poor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101
  • Faye, McArthur, Sachs and Snow (2004), “The Challenge Facing Landlocked Developing Countries, Journal of Human Development
  • Ashraf and Galor (2011). Dynamics and Stagnation in the Malthusian Epoch. The American Economic Review 101.
  • Mayshar, Moav, Neeman and Pascali (2015). Cereals, Appropriability and Hierarchy. CEPR Working Paper 10742.
  • Sanchez de la Sierra (2015). On the Origins of States: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo”, mimeo, Berkeley

 

B2. It’s the Institutions, Stupid!

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2002), “The Reversal of Fortune”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 117

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (2001). “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Economic Development: An Empirical Investigation”, American Economic Review 91.
  • Melissa Dell (2010). “The persistent effects of Peru’s mining Mita”, Econometrica 78.
  • Engerman, Stanley L., and Kenneth Sokoloff. "Colonialism, Inequality and Long-Run Paths of Development." Available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w11057
  • Henderson, Squires, Storeygard and Weil (2018). “The global distribution of economic activity: nature, history, and the role of trade”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 133.
  • Luigi Pascali (2016), “Banks and Development: Jewish Communities in the Italian Renaissance and Current Economic Performance”, The Review of Economics and Statistics.
  • Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2004). Institutions as the fundamental cause of long-run growth. NBER working paper.

B3. Culture, Gender Norms, and Long-run Development

Materials that will be discussed in class:

  • Nunn (2008). The long-term effects of Africa’s slave trade. Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(1).
  • Alesina, Giuliano, Nunn (2013). On the origins of gender roles: women and the plough. Quarterly Journal of Economics 128(1).

 

Additional readings (NOT exam materials):

  • Michalapoulous, Stelios and Elias Pappaioannou (2013), “National Institutions and Sub National Development in Africa”, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
  • Guiso, Sapienza, Zingales (2010). “Long Term Persistence”. NBER WP 14278.
  • Becker, Sascha and L. Woesmann (2009), “Was Weber Wrong? A Human Capital Interpretation of Protestant Economic History”, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
  • Giuliano, P. (2017). Gender: a historical perspective. NBER working paper. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23635