Econ 277A  Economic Development I: Development Microeconomics

Tridip Ray, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi

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Syllabus

General Readings

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

  2. Bardhan, Pranab and Christopher Udry (1999), Development Microeconomics, Oxford University Press.
     

  3. Banerjee, Abhijit, Roland Benabou and Dilip Mookherjee (2006), eds. Understanding Poverty, Oxford University Press.
     

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

Introduction

  1. Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo (2007), "The Economic Lives of the Poor", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21, 141-167.
     

  2. Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo (2008), "What is Middle Class About the Middle Classes Around the World?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22, 3-28.
     

  3. Banerjee, Abhijit, "Big Answers for Big Questions: The Presumption of Growth Policy", Brookings Global Economy and Development Conference, June 2008.

Agricultural Organization and Productivity in Developing Countries

Agrarian Organization

  1. * Eswaran, Mukesh and Ashok Kotwal (1986), "Access to Capital and Agrarian Production Organization", Economic Journal, 96, 482-498.
     
  2. Eswaran, Mukesh and Ashok Kotwal (1985), "A Theory of Two-Tier Labour Markets in Agrarian Economies", American Economic Review, 75, 162-177.

Land Rental Contracts

  1. Ray, Debraj (1998), Development Economics, Princeton University Press; Chapter 12.
     
  2. * Stiglitz, Joseph E. (1974), "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping", Review of Economic Studies, 41, 219-255.
     
  3. * Laffont, Jean-Jacques and Mohamed Salah Matoussi (1995), "Moral Hazard, Financial Constraints and Sharecropping in El Oulja", Review of Economic Studies, 62, 381-399.
     
  4. Singh, Nirvikar (2000), "Theories of Sharecropping", in Readings in Development Microeconomics: Micro-Theory, volume 1, ed. Pranab Bardhan and Christopher Udry, Cambridge: MIT Press.
     
  5. * Shaban, Radwan (1987), "Testing between Competing Models of Sharecropping", Journal of Political Economy, 95, 893-920.
     
  6. * Braido, Luis H. B. (2008), "Evidence on the Incentive Properties of Share Contracts", Journal of Law and Economics, 51, 327-349.
     
  7. * Ackerberg, Daniel A. and Maristella Botticini (2002): "Endogenous Matching and Empirical Determinants of Contractual Form", Journal of Political Economy, 110, 564-591.

Land Reform

  1. * Banerjee, Abhijit V., Paul J. Gertler and Maitreesh Ghatak (2002), "Empowerment and Efficiency: Tenancy Reform in West Bengal", Journal of Political Economy, 110, 239-280.
     
  2. Besley, Timothy and Robin Burgess (2000), "Land Reform, Poverty Reduction, and Growth: Evidence from India", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115, 389-430.

Land Acquisition

  1. Ghatak, Maitreesh and Dilip Mookherjee (2012), "Land Acquisition for Industrialization and Compensation for Displaced Farmers", forthcoming, Journal of Development Economics.
     

  2. Ghatak, Maitreesh and Parikshit Ghosh (2011), "The Land Acquisition Bill: A Critique and a Proposal", Economic and Political Weekly, October 8, 2011, Vol. XLVI, No. 41, pages 65-72.

Interlinkage of Transactions

  1. Braverman, Avishay and Joseph E. Stiglitz (1982), "Sharecropping and the Interlinking of Agrarian Markets", American Economic Review, 72, 695-715.
     

  2. Bardhan, Pranab and Christopher Udry (1999), "Interlinkage of Transactions and Rural Development", Chapter 9, Development Microeconomics, Oxford University Press.

Credit Markets in Developing Countries: Theory and Evidence

  1. Ray, Debraj (1998), Development Economics, Princeton University Press; Chapter 14.
     

  2. Bardhan, Pranab and Christopher Udry (1999), Development Microeconomics, Oxford University Press; Chapter 7.
     

  3. * Ghosh, Parikshit, Dilip Mookherjee and Debraj Ray (2001), "Credit Rationing in Developing Countries: An Overview of the Theory", Chapter 11, Readings in the Theory of Economic Development, ed. Mookherjee, Dilip and Debraj Ray, London: Blackwell.
     

  4. Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duflo and Kaivan Munshi (2003): "The (Mis)allocation of Capital", Journal of the European Economic Association, 1, Papers and Proceedings, 484-494.
     

  5. Karlan, Dean and Jonathan Zinman (2009), "Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment", Econometrica, 77, 1993-2008.
     

  6. Burgess, Robin and Rohini Pande (2005), "Do Rural Banks Matter? Evidence from the Indian Social Banking Experiment", American Economic Review, 95, 780-795.

Micro Finance

  1. Morduch, Jonathan (1999), "The Microfinance Promise", Journal of Economic Literature, 37, 1569-1614.
     

  2. * Ghatak, Maitreesh and Timothy W. Guinnane (1999), "The Economics of Lending with Joint Liability: Theory and Practice", Journal of Development Economics, 60, 1-34.
     

  3. * Roy Chowdhury, Prabal (2007), "Group-lending with Sequential Financing, Contingent Renewal and Social Capital", Journal of Development Economics, 84, 487-506.
     

  4. Gine, Xavier and Dean Karlan (2008), "Peer Monitoring and Enforcement: Long Term Evidence from Microcredit Lending Groups with and without Group Liability", Mimeo, Yale.
     

  5. Karlan, Dean S. (2007), "Social Connections and Group Banking", Economic Journal, 117, F52-F84.
     

  6. Field, Erica and Rohini Pande (2008), "Repayment Frequency and Default in Micro-finance: Evidence from India", Journal of the European Economic Association, 6, 501-509.

Property Rights

  1. * Besley, Timothy (1995), "Property Rights and Investment Incentives: Theory and Evidence from Ghana", Journal of Political Economy, 103, 903-937.
     
  2. * Besley, Timothy and Maitreesh Ghatak (2009), "Property Rights and Economic Development", in D. Rodrik and M. Rosenzweig (eds) Handbook of Development Economics, V, North Holland, 2009.
     
  3. * Besley, Timothy, Konrad B. Burchardi and Maitreesh Ghatak (2012), "Incentives and the de Soto Effect", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127, 237-282.
     
  4. De Soto, Hernando (2000), The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, New York: Basic Books and London: Bantam Press/Random House.
     
  5. Galiani, Sebastian and Ernesto Schargrodsky (2010), "Property Rights for the Poor: Effects of Land Titling", Journal of Public Economics, 94, 700-729.
     
  6. Wang, Shing-Yi (2012), "Credit Constraints, Job Mobility, and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from a Property Reform in China", Review of Economics and Statistics, 94, 532-551.

Social Networks and Informal Institutions

  1. * Besley, Timothy, Stephen Coate and Glenn Loury (1993), "The Economics of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations", American Economic Review, 83, 792-810.
     
  2. Greif, Avner (1993), "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: The Maghribi Traders' Coalition", American Economic Review, 83, 525-548.
     
  3. * Banerjee, Abhijit and Andrew Newman (1998), "Information, the Dual Economy, and Development", Review of Economic Studies, 65, 631-653.
     
  4. Knack, Stephen and Philip Keefer (1997), "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 1252-1288.
     
  5. Munshi, Kaivan (2003), "Networks in the Modern Economy: Mexican Migrants in the U. S. Labor Market", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 549-599.
     
  6. Munshi, Kaivan (2011), "Labor and Credit Networks in Developing Economies," in J. Benhabib, A. Bissin, and M. O. Jackson, eds. Handbook of Social Economics, New York: Elsevier.

Education: Private and Public Education Choice

  1. Stiglitz, Joseph E. (1974), "The Demand for Education in Public and Private School Systems", Journal of Public Economics, 3, 349-385.
     
  2. * Epple, Dennis and Richard E. Romano (1996), "Ends Against the Middle: Determining Public Service Provision when There are Private Alternatives", Journal of Public Economics, 62, 297-325.
     
  3. * Epple, Dennis and Richard E. Romano (1998), "Competition between Private and Public Schools, Vouchers and Peer Group Effects", American Economic Review, 88, 33-62.
     
  4. * Gerhard Glomm and B. Ravikumar (1998), "Opting Out of Publicly Provided Services: A Majority Voting Result", Social Choice and Welfare, 15, 187-99.

Discrimination and Affirmative Action

  1. Akerlof, George (1976), "The Economics of Caste and of the Rat Race and Other Woeful Tales", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 90, 599-617.
     
  2. * Coate, Stephen and Glenn Loury (1993), "Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?" American Economic Review, 83, 1220-1240.
     
  3. * Fang, Hanming and Peter Norman, "Government-Mandated Discriminatory Policies: Theory and Evidence", International Economic Review, 47, 361-389.
     
  4. * Fryer, Roland G. and Glenn Loury (2013), "Valuing Diversity", Journal of Political Economy, 121, 747-774.

The Political Economy of Development

  1. Ray, Debraj (2010), "Uneven Growth: A Framework for Research in Development Economics", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24, 45-60.
     
  2. Esteban, Joan, Laura Mayoral and Debraj Ray (2012), "Ethnicity and Conflict: Theory and Facts", Science, 336, 858-865.
     
  3. * Mitra, Anirban and Debraj Ray (2014), "Implications of an Economic Theory of Conflict: Hindu-Muslim Violence in India," Journal of Political Economy, 122, 719-765.

Last Updated on 26 January 2015.