F-Advanced Development Economics - The Micro Aspects (english)

Course Name: Advanced Development Economics – Micro Aspects
Chronology: M.Sc.
ECTS: 7.5 ECTS
Teacher: Associate Professor John Rand, Email: jra@foi.dk  og professor Henrik Hansen, henrik.hansen@foi.dk

Schedule: Thursday 12-15 CSS 2.1.12

Once you have an approved registration for the course in the student selfservice at KUnet you will automatically get access to the course website in Absalon. 

Academic Aims

This course will cover the microeconomics of development, and will focus on approaches to understanding the behavior of households and firms, and the functioning of markets and institutions in developing countries.
Since development is a field with a strong empirical tradition, most of the course will be centered around discussing and evaluating the empirical strategies used in the literature.

Key topics in micro development will be covered including:
(i) Household economics and intra household allocation, (ii) Health and nutrition (iii) Human capital and education (iv) Land markets and property rights (v) Savings and credit (vi) Risk and insurance (vii) Social networks and learning (viii) Institutions and corruption (ix) Constraints to doing business (x) Firm-level productivity dispersion (xi) Technology adoption and spillovers (xii) Economic transition issues such as privatization (xiii) Project and program evaluation.

Aims:

1. To provide the students a critical overview of the recent literature and important debates within the micro aspects of economic development.

2. To provide insight into methodological issues that arise when doing research on microeconomics of development. The emphasis will be on (i) How theoretical microeconomic hypothesis may be tested with data and (ii) how to identify causal relationships. Therefore, one aim is to gain some insight into what makes a good empirical study.

3. To provide students with a “hands-on” experience on how to replicate empirical results using relevant econometric software. This will hopefully prepare students for original independent empirical research and help identify possible interesting thesis topics.

By the end of the course the students should be able to:

- Explain the main concepts and issues relevant to microeconomic problems of less developed countries.
- Understand and solve presented theoretical models and be able to present the models’ empirical prediction.
- Be able to present empirical results in a precise and consistent manor, as well as demonstrate a thorough understanding of the identification problems faced when carrying out empirical work.

Course Content
See above

Syllabus
Bardhan, P. and Udry, C. (1999). ”Development Microeconomics”, Oxford University Press.
Series of academic articles which will be made available on the course homepage

Language: English
Prerequisites: None
Teaching and Work Forms: Lectures
Formal Requirements: None
Examination
3 hours written exam (closed book).