Dr G Bryan and Dr. G Fischer, LRB. R537

This course is optional for BSc Economics, BSc Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, BSc Economics and Economic History, BSc Economics with Economic History, BSc Government and Economics, BSc Geography with Economics, BSc Philosophy and Economics and BSc Social Policy and Economics. This course is also available to General Course students.

Students should have completed Microeconomic Principles I or II (or equivalent) and Macroeconomic Principles (or equivalent). A knowledge of introductory econometrics such as that provided by Introduction to Econometrics is also necessary given the strong applied forms of the course.

The course provides an introduction to selected issues in economic development including theory, evidence and policy.  The course will explore the related themes of Economic Growth and Development. The course begins by analysing the growth performance of different countries and by presenting the main growth theories to the purpose of identifying, both theoretically and empirically, the determinants of economic growth. The course will then analyse economic institutions in developing countries focusing around the themes of ''Markets, Institutions and Welfare'' and "Public Policy and Welfare". Failures in key markets such as those for land, labour, credit and insurance have far reaching implications both for productive efficiency and welfare. The story of economic development is, in many ways, one of how informal, imaginative institutions have evolved to fill the gaps left by these market failures. The course will study how institutions have evolved to cope with missing markets, and how they affect the allocation and the distribution of resources. The course will analyse both the channel through which the institutional environment affects efficiency and welfare and how public policy can be designed to increase welfare and growth. The course has a strong applied focus. Under each section we want to derive testable implications from the theory, subject these to econometric testing, comment on the robustness of the results obtained and draw out policy conclusions.

Lectures EC307: 30 MT and LT.

Classes EC307.A: 20 MT and LT.

Teaching in the course will be done mainly from journal articles drawn from the forefront of theoretical and applied research in development economics. The main textbooks for the course are A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, Poor Economics, Public Affairs, 2011 and D. Ray, Development Economics, Princeton UP, 1998. Use will also be made of three other reference texts: (i) C Jones, Introduction to Economic Growth, Norton, 1998; (ii) A Deaton, The Analysis of Household Surveys: A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy, John Hopkins UP, 1997 and (iii) J Behrman & T N Srinivasan (Eds), Handbook of Development Economics, Elsevier, 1995. Students less familiar with econometrics should review C Dougherty, Introductory Econometrics, OUP, 1992.

A three-hour written examination in the ST.