EC428      One Unit
Development and Growth

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with PP454 at any time on the same degree programme.

Pre-requisites:

Students must have completed EC400 before taking this course.

Additional requisites:

Students should have completed courses in intermediate level microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics.

This course will cover a number of topics at forefront of development economics, combining theoretical and empirical analysis with a clear focus on policy implications. These include economic growth, poverty traps, inequality and occupational choice, credit markets, microfinance, property rights, land markets current methodological debates; the allocation of capital and labour across firms, space and sectors; structural change during the development process; finance; psychology and development; governance and accountability; conflict and civil war; motivation of civil servants; taxation and development; firms and markets; trade; infrastructure; energy and the environment; and climate change.

Development economics is, arguably, the fastest growing and most vibrant field within economics. The course will enable the students to apply their econometric and theoretical skills to what are some the world’s most pressing problems. The experience of applying their economic knowledge to these topics will generate analytical skills that that can be used in wide variety of applied settings.

1 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
10 hours of seminars and 20 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

Two marked assignments per term.

Most of the reading is from journal articles which appear on reading lists distributed at the start of each part of the course.

However, the following references may serve as an introduction to material included in the syllabus.

D Ray, Development Economics, Princeton UP, 1998, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s Poor Economics, New York: Public Affairs,2011, and the symposium on The Agenda for Development Economics - Journal of Economic Perspectives Volume 24, Number 3, Summer 2010: Articles by Deaton, Acemoglu, Ray, Rodrik, and Rosenzweig.

Assessment Pathway 1

Exam (50%), duration: 120 Minutes, reading time: 15 minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (50%, 6000 words)

Assessment Pathway 2

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes, reading time: 15 minutes in the Spring exam period

MSc Economics & Management students must follow assessment path 2  

All other students must follow assessment path 1

This course is IRDAP-enabled, meaning that resit and deferred assessments will take place in August 2026.