Econ 435/835: Development Economics

Instructor:

Sumon Majumdar Office Hours:

Dunning Hall, Room 318 T 12:00 – 1:00 pm

Dept. of Economics, Queen’s University. W 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Tel: 533-2274 E-mail: sumon@econ.queensu.ca

Teaching Assistant:

Adugna Olani Office Hours:

Dunning Hall, Room 335 R 1:00 -- 2:30 pm

Dept. of Economics, Queen’s University.

Tel: 533-2280 E-mail: olania@econ.queensu.ca

Class: M 1:00 p.m., W 11:30 a.m., Room: Dunning 10.

Course Outline

Announcements

Final exam for the course will be held on December 5, 2013 from 9:30 am - 12:00 noon at Dunning Hall, Room 213.

Winter 2009 final exam (correction: In Q1, w_s = 250)

Paper requirements: final paper is now due by 5 pm on Friday, December 13^th, 2013.

E-mail it to: econ435papers@econ.queensu.ca

Filename should be lastname_firstinitial [example: Majumdar_S.pdf]. Put your full name and student number in the subject line [example: Sumon Majumdar 100-2000].

Michael Kremer’s checklist for papers in economics.

Assignment 1: now due on Friday, October 4^th

Assignment 2: due on Monday, November 4^th
Assignment 3: due on Wednesday, November 18^th

Class Presentation schedule:

November 25 (1 pm): M. Scott, A. Radoi, C. Day

November 27 (11:30 am): L. Bothwell, J. Whittaker, K. Anderopoulos

November 29 (2 pm): T. Eadie, A. Sahota, P. Mourier, G. Yi, J. Thibault, E. Wong, D. Lee, L. Ilg, F. Beier

Course Reading List (will evolve as we go along):

The papers marked with a * will be covered in more detail in class.

I. Growth and Development

The Solow model and the AK model of growth. Barro and Sala-i-Martin, Chapter 1.

* Mankiw, Gregory, D. Romer and D. Weil (1992). "A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth" Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 107 (2), pp. 407 - 437.

* Lucas, R. (1990), “Why Doesn't Capital Flow From Rich to Poor Countries?” American Economic Review 80, 92--96.

Alfaro, L., S. Kalemli-Ozcan and V. Volosovych (2005), “Why Doesn't Capital Flow From Rich to Poor Countries? An Empirical Investigation” NBER Working Paper No. WP11901.

* Barro, Robert (1991). "Economic Growth in a Cross-section of Countries" Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 106 (2), pp. 407 - 43.

* Mauro, Paulo (1995). "Corruption and Growth" Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 110 (3), pp. 681 - 712.

Hall, Robert E. and Charles Jones (1999), "Why do some Countries Produce so much more Output per Worker than Others?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 114 (1), pp. 83-116.

* Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S. and J. Robinson (2001), "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review 91, 1369--1401.

* Acemoglu, D. and J. Robinson (2000), " Political Losers As a Barrier to Economic Development," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 90, 126--130.

Rodrik, D., Subramanian, A. and F. Trebbi, (2004) “Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions over Geography and Integration in Economic Development” Journal of Economic Growth, vol. 9, no.2.

Sachs, Jeffrey (2003), “Institutions Don't Rule: Direct Effects of Geography on Per Capita Income,"” NBER Working Paper 9490.

Acemoglu, D. (2005), “Modeling Inefficient Economic Institutions,” Published in Advances in Economic Theory: Proceedings of the 2005 World Congress.

* Acemoglu, D. and J. Robinson (2006), " De Facto Political Power and Institutional Persistence," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 96(2), 325--330.

Acemoglu, D. and J. Robinson (2008), " Persistence of Power, Elites and Institutions," American Economic Review 98(1), 267--293.

* Acemoglu, D. and S. Johnson (2005), “Unbundling Institutions,” Journal of Political Economy 113(5), 949-995.

Basu, Kaushik (1997), Analytical Development Economics: The Less Developed Economy Revisited, Chapters 2 and 3.

* Murphy, K., Shleifer, A. and R. Vishny (1989), "Industrialization and the Big Push,'' Journal of Political Economy 97, 1003--1026.

* Galor, O. and J. Zeira (1993), “Income Distribution and Macroeconomics,”' Review of Economic Studies 60, 35-52.

Barro, Robert (2000). "Inequality and Growth in a Panel of Countries" Journal of Economic Growth, vol. 5, pp. 5 - 32.

Persson, T. and G. Tabellini (1994), "Is Inequality Harmful for Growth?," American Economic Review 84(2), 600--621.

II. Conflict

* Blattman, Christopher and Edward Miguel (2010) “Civil War,” Journal of Economic Literature, 48(1): 3-57.

Collier, P. and A. Hoeffler (2004), “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 56, 563–95..

* Miguel, Edward, Shanker Satyanath, Ernest Sergenti (2004) “Economic Shocks and Civil Conflict: An Instrumental Variables Approach,” Journal of Political Economy, 112(4): 725-753.

Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson (2008) “The Incidence of Civil War: Theory and Evidence” Working Paper, London School of Economics.

* Guidolin, M., and Eliana la Ferrara (2007) “Diamonds Are Forever, Wars Are Not. Is Conflict Bad for Private Firms?" American Economic Review, 97(5): 1978-1993.

Robinson, James, Ragnar Torvik, Thierry Verdier (2006) “Political foundations of the resource curse ,” Journal of Development Economics , Vol. 79, 447-468.

Joan Estaban and Debraj Ray (2008) “On the Salience of Ethnic Conflict” American Economic Review, vol. 98(5): 2185 - 2202.

Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson (2008) “Wars and State Capacity” Journal of the European Economic Association, vol. 6, 522-530.

* Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson (2009) “Repression or Civil War?” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, vol. 99: 292 - 297.

III. Child Labor

* Basu, Kaushik and Tzannatos, Zafiris (2003) “The Global Child Labor Problem: What do we Know and What can we do?” World Bank Economic Review 17.

* Basu, Kaushik, and Van, Pham Hoang (1998). “The Economics of Child Labor.” American Economic Review 88: 412–27.

Robinson, James, Jean-Marie Baland (2000) “Is Child Labor Inefficient? ” Journal of Political Economy, 108, 663-679.

IV. Gender Issues in Development

* Sen, Amartya (1990) “More than 100 million women are missing,” New York Review of Books 37(20), Dec 20.

* Anderson, Siwan and Debraj Ray (2010). “Missing Women: Age and Disease.” Review of Economic Studies 77: 1262 – 1300.

Qian, Nancy (2008) “Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Income on Sex Imbalance,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(3).

Arnold, F., Kishor, S., and Roy, T.K. (2002) “Sex-Selective Abortions in India,” Population and Development Review 28(4): 759-785.

* Lori Beaman, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Rohini Pande and Petia Topalova (2009) “Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Prejudice?” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(4): 1497 - 1540.

* * *

Supporting slides: Lectures 11 September - 28 October

Lectures 30 October - 6 November

Lecture 13 November - 18 November