Economic Development [3HEFEK155V]

Time and place

All courses in the winter term will be held online.

Lecture (Prof. Dr. Carsten Hefeker):

Wednesday, 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM c.t. 

Room: US-A 016 

• weekly; first lecture: Nov 4, 2020

Tutorial (Ard Uka):

Monday, 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM c.t.

Room: US-A 016 

• every second week; first tutorial: Nov 9, 2020

 Office hours:

After class and by appointment. Send email to Carsten.Hefeker@uni-siegen.de using your official @student.uni-siegen.de email account. 

Please make sure that you register on UNISONO for material and recent updates. 

•  Economic Development 

Mechanics

The course is based mainly on parts of textbooks and selected articles mentioned below. Additional sources will be specified in class. Slides and problem sets are available via UNISONO if you are registered for the course. Slides cover all relevant material but will not be sufficient to pass the course.

This course has 9 Credit Points. In addition to participating in the lecture and passing the final exam, each student will be required to solve problem sets and present the solution in the tutorial. Each of these assignments is mandatory and will be part of the final grade. Details will be given in class and tutorial.

Outline

 Part I: The Facts

1. The Development Gap
2. Dimensions of Development
3. Convergence
4. Inequality

Main Literature: Roland, Todaro and Smith.
Additional Literature: Banerjee and Duflo, Goldin, Raj, Sen.

Part II: Theories of Development

1. Factor Accumulation
2. Structural Change
3. Market Liberalism and the Washington Consensus

Main Literature: Roland, Todaro and Smith.
Additional Literature: Easterly, Edwards, Goldin.

Part III: Institutions and Development

1. What are Institutions?
2. Political Institutions
3. Property Rights
4. History and Institutions

Main Literature: Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson.
Additional Literature: Acemoglu and Robinson, Djankov et al., North et al., Williamson.

Part IV: Institutions and Reform

1. Corruption and Development
2. Natural Resources and Development
3. Economic Populism
4. The Problem of Reform

Main Literature: Edwards (2019), Mehlum et al., Rodrik (2008a), Ross.
Additional Literature: Aslaksen and Torvik, Fernandez and Rodrik, Rodrik (2008b), Venables.

Literature

Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson (2005) Institutions as a Funda-mental Cause of Long-Run Growth, Handbook of Economic Growth Vol. 1A, 385-472. (Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/handbooks/15740684/1/part/PA).

Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson (2011) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, New York: Crown.

Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson (2019) Rents and Economic Development: The Perspective of Why Nations Fail, Public Choice 181, 13–28.

Aslaksen, Silje and Ragnar Torvik (2006) A Theory of Civil Conflict and Democracy in Rentier States, Scandinavian Journal of Economics 108, 571-585.

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

Besley, Timothy and Maitreesh Ghatak (2010) Property Rights and Economic Development, Handbook of Development Economics Vol 5, 4525-4595. (Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444529442000069).

Djankov, Simeon, Edward Glaeser, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes and Andrei Shleifer (2003) The New Comparative Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics 31, 595-619.

Easterly, William (2001) The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadven-tures in the Tropics, Cambridge: MIT-Press.

Easterly, William (2019) In Search of Reforms for Growth: New Stylized Facts on Policy and Growth Outcomes, NBER Working Paper 26318.

Edwards, Sebastian (2015) Economic Development and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid: A Historical Perspective, Kyklos 68, 277-316.

Edwards, Sebastian (2019) On Latin American Populism, and Its Echoes around the World, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33 (4), 76–99.

Fernandez, Raquel and Dani Rodrik (1991) Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty, American Economic Review 81, 1146-1155.

Goldin, Ian (2018) Development: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mehlum, Halvor, Karl Moene and Ragnar Torvik (2006) Cursed by Resources or Institutions?, World Economy 29, 1117-1131.

Johnson, Paul and Chris Papageorgiou (2020) What Remains of Cross-Country Convergence?, Journal of Economic Literature 58, 129-175.

Kremer, Michael (1993) The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development, Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, 551-575.

North, Douglass C., John Joseph Wallis and Barry R. Weingast (2009) Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History, Cam-bridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

Nunn, Nathan (2014) Historical Development, Handbook of Economic Growth Vol. 2A, 347-402. (Available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444535382000071).

Rajan, Raghuram and Arvind Subramanian (2008) Aid and Growth: What does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show?, Review of Economics and Statistics 90, 643-665.

Ray, Debraj (1998) Development Economics, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rodrik, Dani (2008a) One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions and Economic Growth, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rodrik, Dani (2008b) Second-Best Institutions, American Economic Review 98, 100-104.

Rodrik, Dani (2014) The Past, Present, and Future of Economic Growth, Challenge 57:3, 5-39.

Roland, Gérard (2014) Development Economics, Basingstoke: Routledge.

Ross, Michael L (2018) The Politics of the Resource Curse: A Review, in Lancaster, Carol and Nicolas van de Walle (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (available at: https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/papers/chapters/Politics%20of%20the%20Resource%20Curse%20Oxford2018.pdf ).

Sen, Amartya (2001) Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Todaro, Michael and Stephen Smith (2011) Development Economics, Essex: Pearson.

Venables, Anthony J. (2016) Using Natural Resources for Development: Why has it Proven so Difficult?, Journal of Economic Perspectives 30, 161-183.

Williamson, Oliver E. (2000) The New Institutional Economics: Taking Stock, Looking Ahead, Journal of Economic Literature 38, 595-613.