Reading Schedule Fall 2024#
Listed below are the articles that were assigned as required or otherwise discussed at some depth for each week’s class. See the Syllabus for a longer list of related readings for each topic, and the slides and handouts page for links to the slides and handouts for each week.
The Discussions forum also has weekly readings and readers guide.
Week 1: Introduction#
* Allen, R.C., 2011. Global economic history: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Chs 1-4. (link)
* de Janvry, Alain, and Elisabeth Sadoulet. 2016. “History of thought in development economics,” chapter 3 in Development Economics: Theory and Practice. Routledge. (link)
* Lucas, Robert E. “Why Doesn’t Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?” American Economic Review (1990): 92-96. link
Week 2: Income and Productivity Gaps#
* Banerjee, A.V., Duflo, E., 2005. Chapter 7 Growth Theory through the Lens of Development Economics, in: Aghion, P., Durlauf, S.N. (Eds.), Handbook of Economic Growth. Elsevier, pp. 473–552. (link). Read through 475-535
* Gollin, Douglas, David Lagakos, and Michael E. Waugh. 2014. “Agricultural Productivity Differences across Countries.” The American Economic Review 104 (5): 165–70. (link) * Vollrath, Dietrich. “How Important Are Dual Economy Effects for Aggregate Productivity?” Journal of development economics 88, no. 2 (2009): 325-34. (link)
Jones, Charles I. 2016. “The Facts of Economic Growth.” In Handbook of Macroeconomics, 2:3–69. Elsevier. (link). Sections 1-2, 4-5
Week 3: Structural Transformation#
* Herrendorf, Berthold, Richard Rogerson, and Akos Valentinyi. 2014. “Growth and Structural Transformation.” Handbook of Economic Growth 2:855–941. [link]
* Matsuyama, K., 2008. Structural change. The new Palgrave dictionary of economics 2. [link]
* Gollin, Douglas, Stephen Parente, and Richard Rogerson. “The Role of Agriculture in Development.” American Economic Review (2002): 160-64. [link]
* Galor, Oded, Omer Moav, and Dietrich Vollrath. 2009. “Inequality in Landownership, the Emergence of Human-Capital Promoting Institutions, and the Great Divergence.” The Review of Economic Studies 76 (1): 143–79. link
Matsuyama, K., 1992. Agricultural productivity, comparative advantage, and economic growth. Journal of economic theory 58, 317–334. [link]
Harris, J.R. and M.P. Todaro, 1970, “Migration, unemployment and development: a two-sector model.” American Economic Review, March 1970, 60:1, 126-142.
Week 4: Institutions, Political Economy, and Persistence#
* North, Douglass. 1990. “An Introduction,” chapter 1 in Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. [link]
* Binswanger, H.P., K. Deininger, and G. Feder. 1995, “Power, Distortions, Revolt and Reform in Agricultural Land Relations.” Handbook of development economics 3 : 2659-2772. [link] (read to p2682)
* Dell, Melissa 2010. “The Persistent Effects of Peru’s Mining Mita.” Econometrica 78, no. 6 1863-903 [link] Optional, but interesting and will be mentioned:
Acemoglu, Daron. 2003. “Why Not a Political Coase Theorem? Social Conflict, Commitment, and Politics.” Journal of Comparative Economics 31 (4): 620–52.
Week 5: Property Rights, Farm Size Distribution, and Misallocation#
* Holden, Stein, Keijiro Otsuka, and Klaus Deininger. 2013. “Issues and Theoretical Framework,” Chapter 1 in Land Tenure Reform in Asia and Africa: Assessing Impacts on Poverty and Natural Resource Management. Springer. Read only pages 3-19. [link]
* Chen, C., 2017. Untitled Land, Occupational Choice, and Agricultural Productivity. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 9, 91–121. [link]
* Baker, M.J., Conning, J., 2024. A model of Enclosures: Conflict, Coordination and Efficiency in the Transformation of Property Rights. link
Chen, C, Restuccia, D., Santaeulalia-Llopis, R., 2023. Land misallocation and productivity. American Economic Journal: Macroeconmomics 441-65 [link]
Week 6. Property Rights, Household Production, and Intra-household allocations#
Week 7: Consumption smoothing, contracting, and behavioral finance#
class slides, Arturo’s slides on Basu 2011
* Conning, Jonathan and Chris Udry 2007. “Rural Financial Markets.” In Handbook of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 3, edited by R.E. Evenson, P. Pingali and T.P. Schultz: Elsevier, North-Holland. [link]
* Anderson, S, Baland, JM and Moene, KO. 2009. “Enforcement in Informal Saving Groups.” Journal of Development Economics 90 (1): 14–23.
* Basu, Karna. 2011. “Hyperbolic Discounting and the Sustainability of Rotational Savings Arrangements.” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 3 (4): 143–71.
Besley, T, S Coate, and G Loury. 1993. “The Economics of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations.” The American Economic Review, 792–810.
Week 8: Political Decentralization, Governance, and Capture#
(class slides, notebook on intermediaries and corruption, slides for Balan et al by Ebrahim)
* Mookherjee, Dilip. 2015. “Political Decentralization.” Annual Review of Economics 7 (1): 231–49. link
* Balán, Pablo, Augustin Bergeron, Gabriel Tourek, and Jonathan L. Weigel. 2022. “Local Elites as State Capacity: How City Chiefs Use Local Information to Increase Tax Compliance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.” American Economic Review 112 (3): 762–97. link.
Galasso, Emanuela, and Martin Ravallion. 2005. “Decentralized Targeting of an Antipoverty Program.” Journal of Public Economics 89 (4): 705–27. link
Week 9: State Origins, Capacity, and Extraction or Inclusion#
(class slides, slides for Allen et al by Marian)
* Allen, Robert C., Mattia C. Bertazzini, and Leander Heldring. 2023. “The Economic Origins of Government.” American Economic Review 113 (10): 2507–45. link
* Robinson, James A. 2002. “States and Power in Africa by Jeffrey I. Herbst: A Review Essay.” Journal of Economic Literature 40 (2): 510–19. link
* Domar, Evsey D. 1970. “The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis.” Journal of Economic History 30 (1): 18–32. link
Dippel, Christian, Avner Greif, and Daniel Trefler. 2020. “Outside Options, Coercion, and Wages: Removing the Sugar Coating.” The Economic Journal 130 (630): 1678–1714. link
Week 10: Public Goods, Access, Capabilities, and Change#
(slides for Banerjee Somanathan by Tanmay)
* Sen, Amartya Kumar. 1999. Development as Freedom, Knopf : Random House. read Chapter 1 “The Perspective of Freedom,” and Chapter 2 “The Ends and the Means of Development” (pp 13-54). [** for copy, see below]
* Banerjee, Abhijit, and Rohini Somanathan. 2007. “The Political Economy of Public Goods: Some Evidence from India.” Journal of Development Economics 82 (2): 287–314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2006.04.005 [pdf link]
Galasso, Emanuela, and Martin Ravallion. 2005. “Decentralized Targeting of an Antipoverty Program.” Journal of Public Economics 89 (4): 705–27. [pdf link]
Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, and Esther Duflo. 2004. “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India.” Econometrica 72 (5): 1409–43. [pdf link]
Week 11: Manufacturing and industrial policy#
(slides on Hsieh and Klenow by Zhenye, my related slides and short slides on ISI)
* Hsieh, Chang-Tai, and Peter J. Klenow. 2009. “Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 124 (4): 1403–48. [link]
* Juhász, Réka, Nathan Lane, and Dani Rodrik. 2024. “The New Economics of Industrial Policy.” Annual Review of Economics 16 (1): 213–42. [link]
Allen, R.C., 2011. Global economic history: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Chapter 4 “The Ascent of the Rich” (link. You already read this week 1)
Week 12: Services and development; course recap#
(slides on services, Practice Field Exam)
* Schwartzman, Matthew (2024) “From Street Markets to Shopping Malls: The Transformation of the Service Sector,” job market paper, link