Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Recitations: 1 session / week, 1 hour / session

Instructors

Prof. Esther Duflo (first half of semester)

Prof. Dave Donaldson (second half of semester)

Course Description

This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor—or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?

Prerequisites

No prerequisites. However, economics is a mathematical science so math will appear, in small doses, in two forms. First, this course is empirically-oriented, so almost all of the required readings and lectures will, at times, use elementary statistics to describe the world. In addition, a handful of the required readings will use more advanced statistical tools (such as correlations and regressions) to dig deeper into the data. However, the recitations for this course will go over these more advanced concepts in detail, so no prior knowledge is required. Second, the lectures will occasionally discuss simple mathematical models that economists find helpful to describe some aspects of the data. The intuition behind these models will, however, always be made clear, and can be used as a substitute (for the purposes of your understanding, and when answering exam questions) for mathematics.

Course Overview

The course is organized around 7 thematic units: Introduction, Food, Education, Health, Finance, Institutions, and International Dimensions. During the lectures, we will ask all of you for your participation and insight, so don't forget to bring your critical mind to class with you. Lecture notes will be distributed at each session. They are not a substitute for attending the class, but rather a study aide. In order to motivate some of the issues discussed in the lectures and readings we will watch a handful of short films during some of the lectures.

Readings

The required text for this class is:

Banerjee, Abhijit V., Roland Benabou, and Dilip Mookherjee, eds. Understanding Poverty. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780195305203.

We will also rely on articles and chapters of other books. Required readings need to be read before the lecture. Additional readings are not required, but will aid your understanding of the lecture material.

Grading