Development Economics
Development Economics (Winter term 2016-17) | ||
Time and place | Lecture (LSF) Tuesday
Monday | |
News |
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Content | The course aims at providing students with a basic understanding of the major development problems in the non-developed world and which instruments are discussed to solve these problems. The course hence focuses on the analysis of underdeveloped, developing and transition economies. A major topic is understanding underdevelopment and poverty, and how a positive economic development in these regions of the world might be generated, respectively which conditions may increase the probability of a successful development. Given the huge diversity of the problems and aspects, the lecture can only serve as an introduction to selected major topics in development economics. Preliminary Syllabus 1. Introduction Basu (2003: Chapt. 1); Ray (1998: Chapt. 1); Siemers (2005: Chapt. 1.2); Todaro and Smith (2011: Chapt. 1) 2. Some Issues and Facts about Underdevelopment Ray (1998: Chapt. 2) 3. Poverty Traps: First-Generation Theories Basu (2003: Chapt. 2); Siemers (2005: Chapt. 1.3); Todaro and Smith (2011: Chapt. 3) 4. Poverty Traps: Contemporary Theories Basu (2003: Chapt. 2); Siemers (2005: Chapt. 1.3); Todaro and Smith (2011: Chapt. 4) 5. Inequality and Development Ray (1998: Chapt. 7); Galor and Zeira (1993) 6. Tax-Benefits Schemes to Overcome Poverty Traps Bell and Gersbach (2009) 7. Land Reform Gersbach and Siemers (2010) 8. Rural-Urban Interactions Basu (2003: Chapt. 8); Ray (1998: Chapt. 10); Todaro and Smith (2011: Chapt. 7) 9. Development and Institutions Acemoglu and Robinson (2010); Drazen (2000); Gersbach and Siemers (2012); Knack and Keefer (1995); Persson and Tabellini (2000); Rodrik et al. (2004) | |
Slides | Will be provided via LSF. Please register for the lecture to gain access. | |
Exercises and solution hints | Will be provided via LSF. Please register for the tutorial to gain access. | |
Literature | Reading For each topic, the relevant literature will be named in the lecture (see also above in the table of content). The lecture is geared by Basu (2003) and Ray (1998), where the majority of chapters is formally elaborated. A further classic text book is Todaro and Smith (2011), which covers the topics in less mathematical form. However, single topics are solely covered by journal articles or other books. The major literature is available at the university library. It is expected that the students read the respective pages in at least one of the named works. Studying the lecture/tutorial notes is usually not sufficient. |