Florida International University
Empirical Development Microeconomics
Fall Term, AY 2015-16
Lecturer: Paul Castañeda Dower
Email: pcastane@fiu.edu
Office hours: Wed. 10am-12pm
Teaching assistant: TBA
I. Summary
This course covers topics related to the microeconomic analysis of development
economics with a special emphasis on empirical methods. The aim of this course is
therefore twofold: i) to immerse the student in the rich literature on the documentation
and causes of the large disparities in human welfare that we observe around the world
today and ii) to equip the student with various research tools commonly used in this
literature.
Tentative Outline:
1. Facts to be explained, 8/25
2. Theories of economic development, 8/27, 9/1
3. Measurement of key variables, 9/3, 9/08
4. Measurement of functional relationships, 9/10
5. Households, 9/15, 9/17, 9/22, 9/24
6. Firms, 9/29, 10/1, 10/6, 10/13
7. Factor markets, 10/15, 10/20, 10/22, makeup class
8. Institutions, 10/27, 10/29, 11/3
9. Social ties, 11/5, 11/10, 11/12
10. Governance, 11/17, 11/19
11. Poverty alleviation, 11/24
12. Project presentations, 12/1,12/3
**No class on 10/8.
II. Evaluation
The course grade will be based on class participation (25%), referee reports (20%),
problem sets (20%), and one final project (35%).
Class participation:
Besides being active participants in class, you will have two additional responsibilities.
1) Once a week you should select a paper from the corresponding part of the syllabus
and write 50-100 words on one of the following: 1) how the paper addresses a broader
theme in development and why it is important; 2) how a particular aspect of the paper
could be improved; 3) an interesting extension of the paper. The aim of this exercise is
to improve the student’s ability of discussing and engaging the literature.
2) Each of you (PhD students only if class size is too large) will be required to give a fulllength seminar presentation of a designated paper. The aim of this exercise is to
encourage students to delve deeper into the makings of a research paper as well as to
develop presentation skills.
Referee Reports:
You will be asked to write two referee reports. The first will be on any article in the
Journal of Development Economics within the last three years. The second will be on a
current PhD candidate’s job market paper and will be announced later. I will circulate
several different guides on how to write a referee report.
Problem Sets:
The problem sets will consist of exercises that require you to demonstrate data analysis
skills. You may use the statistical package of your choosing but you should include your
code and other necessary program files that you generated for the assignment. You
may work in groups.
Course project:
You will be expected to produce and present the beginnings of a research paper by the
end of the course.
You will be graded by the instructor and by peer review. The course project consists of
three graded components. First, you will write a literature survey on a topic of your
choice. A good initial source of potential topics is the Global Development Network’s
Global Research Projects http://www.gdnet.org/middle.php?oid=75. In addition, papers
listed by the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development
(http://ipl.econ.duke.edu/bread/) could be nice sources of inspiration. You will be
judged on how well you choose the papers, your summary of each paper and how you
relate the papers. Second, you will write a research prospectus. This document will
serve as the beginnings of an empirical research paper. It should consist of no more
than 5 pages, clearly pose a research question, provide motivation, discuss the
identification strategy and the data to be (potentially) used, and place the paper in the
existing literature. You will have several opportunities to get feedback before the final
prospectus is turned in. Finally, you will give a 15-minute presentation to the entire
class followed by a 5-minute discussion.
Timeline of course project:
Oct. 9th: Literature surveys due.
Oct. 16th: Brief project description for instructor and peer feedback.
Nov. 16th: Draft prospectus due.
Nov. 23rd: Peer review reports due.
Dec. 1st and 3rd: Presentations. Final prospectus and presentation slides due.
For all assignments, exams and attendance, the FIU academic integrity policy applies.
Students should consult the FIU Student Handbook for further details.
III. Course Materials
The main readings for the course are comprised of the assigned papers. Starred papers
will be covered in depth in class.
While there is no textbook for this course, there are three books that I encourage you to
turn to for background reading:
- Ray, Debraj. Development Economics, Princeton University Press 1998.
- Easterly, William. Elusive Quest for Growth. Economists Adventures and
Misadventures in the Tropics. MIT Press 2001.
- Deaton, Angus. The Analysis of Household Surveys. John Hopkins, 1997.
Ray is a textbook focusing on the theory of economic development. Easterly’s books
provide a rich-with-concrete-examples complement to Ray. Deaton’s is a standard
book on empirical methods in development.
IV. Course Topics
The course topics and readings are listed below. Papers marked with an asterisk will
receive substantial attention in the lectures. This part of the syllabus may be updated
periodically throughout the course so please check regularly to keep up with the
readings.
1. Introduction: Features of development, facts to be explained, and what can be done
*Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo “The Economic Lives of the Poor,” Journal of
Economic Perspectives. Volume 21, Number 1, Winter 2007, pp. 141–167.
Krugman, Paul. "The fall and rise of development economics." Rethinking the
Development Experience: Essays Provoked by the Work of Albert O. Hirschman (1994): 3958.
*William Easterly (2009) "Can the West Save Africa?" Journal of Economic Literature
47(2).
Lucas.R.E (1993) “Making a Miracle”, Econometrica, 61: 251-72. Mankiw, N. Gregory, David Romer, and David Weil. (1992). “A Contribution to the
Empirics of Economic Growth”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 407-438.
Levine, Ross, and David Renelt. (1992). “A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth
Regressions,” American Economic Review, 82, 942-963.
*Durlauf, Steven N., Paul A. Johnson, and Jonathan RW Temple. "Growth
econometrics." Handbook of economic growth 1 (2005): 555-677
2. Theories of development: Convergence, dualism, complementarities and deep
determinants
Easterly, William and Ross Levine, It’s Not Factor Accumulation: Stylized Facts and
Growth Models, World Bank Economic Review, 15, no. 2, (2001).
*Banerjee, Abhijit V., and Esther Duflo. "Growth theory through the lens of
development economics." Handbook of Economic Growth 1 (2005): 473-552.
*Gollin, D. (2014). "The Lewis Model: A 60-Year Retrospective." 2014. Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 28(3): 71-88. Buera, F. J. and J. P. Kaboski (2009). “Can Traditional Theories of Structural Change Fit
the Data?”Journal of European Economic Association, 7(2-3), 469-477. *Murphy, Kevin, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny. (1989). “Industrialization and the
Big Push”, Journal of Political Economy, 97(5), 1003-1026.
Antonio Ciccone and Kiminori Matsuyama (1996) “Start-up Costs and Pecuniary
Externalities as Barriers to Economic Development," Journal of Development Economics,
49 (April 1996): 33-59.
Matsuyama, K. (1992). Agricultural productivity, comparative advantage, and economic
growth. Journal of Economic Theory, 58(2), 317-334.
Ray, Debraj and A. Adsera. History and Coordination Failure Journal of Economic
Growth 3, 267--276 (1998).
Azariadis, Costas, and John Stachurski. "Poverty traps." Handbook of Economic
Growth 1 (2005): 295-384.
*Banerjee, Abhijit and Andrew Newmann (1993), "Occupational Choice and the Process
of Development," Journal of Political Economy, 101(2), pp. 274-298.
Hoff, Karla, and Arijit Sen (2011). "The Kin System as a Poverty Trap?" in Samuel
Bowles, Steven N. Durlauf, Karla Hoff (eds.), Poverty Traps. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, p.95.
Ray, Debraj. Aspirations, Poverty and Economic Change, in A. Banerjee, R. Bénabou
and D. Mookherjee (eds), Understanding Poverty, Oxford University Press (2006).
*Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff , “History Lessons, Institutions, Factor
Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World,” Journal of Economic
Perspectives, 14(3) 2000.
Nathan Nunn. The importance of history for economic development. Annu. Rev. Econ ,
1, 2009
Kremer, M., "The O-Ring Theory of Economic Development" Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 108 (3), pp. 551-575, 1993.
3. Measurement of variables
Sen.A (1986) “The Concept of Development”, Chapter 2 in H.Chenery and T.N.
Srinivasan, (eds), Handbook of Development Economics Volume I, Amsterdam: NorthHolland. *Deaton, Angus. (2005). “ Measuring Poverty in a Growing World (or Measuring Growth
in a Poor World),” Review of Economics and Statistics, 87(1), 1-19.
*Jonathan Morduch (2008) “Poverty Measures” chapter 3 of United Nations Handbook
of Poverty Statistics. New York: United Nations.
Deaton, Angus. 2004. “Measuring poverty.” In Understanding Poverty, (ed.) Abhijit
Banerjee, Roland Benabou, and Dilip Mookherjee. Oxford University Press.
Atkinson, A. B. (1987), ‘On the Measurement of Poverty’, Econometrica, 55.
Duclos, J. D. Sahn, and S. Younger (2006) Robust multidimensional poverty
comparisons, Economic Journal 116: 943-968.
Kamanou, Gisele and Jonathan Morduch. (2002). “Measuring Vulnerability to
Poverty,” NYU Wagner Working Paper No. WP1012. New York: New York
University.
Hsieh, Chang-Tai and Peter J. Klenow (2010). “Development Accounting”, American
Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2:1, 207-223.
Jones, Charles I. and Peter J. Klenow (2011). “Beyond GDP? Welfare across Countries
and Time.” Working Paper.
4. Measurement of functional relationships
*Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo, “The Experimental Approach to Development
Economics,” 2008. CEPR Discussion Papers 7037.
*Deaton, Angus, “The Instruments of Development: Randomization in the tropics, and
the search for the elusive keys to economic development,” 2009.
Nancy Cartwright (2007) Are RCTs the Gold Standard? BioSocieties , 2, 11–20
*Heckman, James J., and Sergio Urzua. "Comparing IV with structural models: What
simple IV can and cannot identify." Journal of Econometrics 156.1 (2010): 27-37.
*Petra E. Todd and Kenneth I. Wolpin (2010). “Structural Estimation and Policy
Evaluation in Developing Countries.” Annual Review of Economics Vol. 2: 21-50
Bruhn, Miriam and David McKenzie. October 2009. “In Pursuit of Balance:
Randomization in Practice in Development Field Experiments.” American Economic
Journal-Applied Economics. 1(4): 200-232.
5. Household behavior: Responses to missing markets, intrahousehold allocation,
human capital investment and externalities
Toolkit: Randomized controlled trials, Structural estimation
De Janvry, M.Fafchamps, and E. Sadoulet, "Peasant Household Behavior With Missing
Markets: Some Paradoxes Explained," EJ (1991)
*Pascaline Dupas and Jonathan Robinson (2013) “Why Don’t the Poor Save More?
Evidence from Health Savings Experiments” American Economic Review, 103(4): 1138–
1171.
Fafchamps, Marcel, Christopher Udry and Katherine Czukas. 1998 "Drought and Saving
in West Africa: Are Livestock a Buffer Stock?", Journal of Development Economics, 55(2):
273-305
Carter, M.R. and T. Lybbert (2012), “Consumption versus asset smoothing: testing the
implications of poverty trap theory in Burkina Faso”, JDE 99: 255–264.
*Christina H. Paxson “Using Weather Variability to Estimate the Response of Savings to
Transitory Income in Thailand” The American Economic Review,
Vol. 82, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 15-33
*Maccini, S. and D. Yang (2009), “Under the Weather: Health, Schooling, and Economic
Consequences of Early-Life Rainfall” AER 99:3, 1006–1026.
Strauss, J. and D. Thomas (1998), “Health, Nutrition, and Economic Development”,
Journal of Economic Literature 36, 2: 766-817.
H.Jacoby, “Shadow Wages and Peasant Family Labour Supply: An Econometric
Application to the Peruvian Sierra,” REStud, 60, 3 (1993): 903-921.
Dwayne Benjamin (1992). “Household Composition, Labor Markets, and Labor
Demand: Testing for Separation in Agricultural Household Models”. Econometrica,
60.2, pp. 287- 322.
Thomas, Duncan (1990), “Intra-household resource allocation: an inferential approach,”
Journal of Human Resources 25: 635-664.
*G. Bobonis (2009), “Is the Allocation of Resources within the Household Efficient?
New Evidence from a Randomized Experiment,” Journal of Political Economy.
*Duflo, E. (2003). “Grandmothers and granddaughters: Old age pension and
intrahousehold allocation in South Africa”. World Bank Economic Review 17 (1), 1–26.
Dercon, Stefan, and Pramila Krishnan. 2000. In Sickness and in Health: Risk Sharing
within Households in Rural Ethiopia”. Journal of Political Economy 108(4): 688-727.
Jensen, Robert (2010). “The (Perceived) Returns to Education and the Demand for
Schooling," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(2), pp. 515-548.
*Attanasio, Orazio, Costas Meghir and Ana Santiago, 2012, “Education Choices in
Mexico: Using a Structural Model and a Randomized Experiment to Evaluate
PROGRESA” Review of Economic Studies.
*Jayachandran, Seema and Adriana Lleras-Muney, “Life Expectancy and Human
Capital Investments: Evidence from Maternal Mortality Declines,” Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 124(1), February 2009, pp. 349-397
*Miguel, Edward and Michael Kremer (2004) "Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education
and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities", Econometrica, 72 (1), 159-217
6. Firm behavior: Entrepreneurship, technology adoption and formalization
Toolkit: Matching
Suresh de Mel, David McKenzie, Christopher Woodruff (2010) “Who are the
Microenterprise Owners? Evidence from Sri Lanka on Tokman versus De Soto”
International Differences in Entrepreneurship, Josh Lerner and Antoinette Schoar,
editors, University of Chicago Press.
*McKenzie, David and Christopher Woodruff (2006). “Do Entry Costs Provide an
Empirical Basis for Poverty Traps? Evidence from Mexican Microenterprises.” Economic
Development and Cultural Change
*Gotland, E. M., Sadoulet, E., De Janvry, A., Murgai, R., Ortiz, O., 2004. “The impact of
farmer field schools on knowledge and productivity: A study of potato farmers in the
Peruvian Andes.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 53: 63–92.
G. Bryan, S. Chowdhury and A. M. Mobarak. “Under-Investment in a Profitable
Technology: The Case of Seasonal Migration in Bangladesh,” Econometrica,
forthcoming September 2014
A. Foster and M. Rosenzweig, ”Learning By Doing and Learning from Others: Human
Capital and Technical Change in Agriculture,” JPE (1995).
T. Conley and C. Udry, “Learning About a New Technology: Pineapple in Ghana,” AER
(2010).
*T.Suri,“Selection and Comparative Advantage In Technology Adoption,” Econometrica
79(1): 159-209.
B. Minten and C.B. Barrett (2008), “Agricultural Technology, Productivity and Poverty
in Madagascar,” World Development 36(5): 797-822.
*Suresh de Mel, David McKenzie, Christopher Woodruff (2013). “The demand for, and
consequences of, formalization among informal firms in Sri Lanka” AEJ: Applied
Economics, 5(2), pp. 122-150.
Fajnzylber, Pablo, William Maloney and Gabriel Montes-Rojas. 2011. “Does
formality improve micro-firm performance? Evidence from the Brazilian
SIMPLES program.” Journal of Development Economics 94: 262-76.
Bloom, Nicholas, Benn Eifert, Aprajit Mahajan, David McKenzie and John Roberts.
(2011). “Does Management Matter? Evidence from India.” Working Paper.
7. Factor markets: Misallocation and information constraints
Toolkit: Higher order differencing
*Restuccia, Diego. “Factor Misallocation and Development”
Abhijit Banerjee and Kaivan Munshi (2004). “How Efficiently is Capital Allocated:
Evidence from the Knitted Garment Industry.” Review of Economic Studies 71(1), pp.
19- 42.
Hsieh, Chang-Tai and Peter Klenow. 2009. Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in
China and India,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 124(4): 1403-1448.
*Banerjee, Abhijit V. and Esther Duflo. Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Credit
Constraints Using a Directed Lending Program. Review of Economic Studies,
Timothy Besley (1994): “How Do Market Failures Justify Interventions in Credit
Markets”, World Bank Economic Observer, 9.1, pp. 27-48.
*Morduch, Jonathan (1998) "Does Microfinance Really Help the Poor? New Evidence
from Flagship Programs in Bangladesh", mimeo.
Field, Erica, Rohini Pande, John Papp, and Natalia Rigol. 2013. “Does the Classic
Microfinance Model Discourage Entrepreneurship Among the Poor? Experimental
Evidence from India” American Economic Review, 103(6): 2196–2226
*de Janvry, Alain, Craig McIntosh, and Elisabeth Sadoulet, "The Supply and Demand
Side Impacts of Credit Market Information", forthcoming in Journal of Development
Economics
Aleem, Irfan. "Imperfect Information, Screening and The Costs of Informal Lending: A
Study of a Rural Credit Market in Pakistan." World Bank Economic Review 4: 329-349,
1990.
Besley, Timothy, Stephen Coate, and Glenn Loury "Rotating Savings and Credit
Associations, Credit Markets and Efficiency", Review of Economic Studies, 61(4), 701719.
*Udry.C (1994) “Risk and Insurance in a Rural Credit Market: An Empirical
Investigation in Northern Nigeria”, Review of Economic Studies 61: 495-526. Foster, Andrew and Mark Rosenzweig. 1996. "Comparative Advantage, Information
and the Allocation of Workers to Tasks: Evidence from an Agricultural Labor Market."
Review of Economic Studies. 63/3 (July), 347-74.
Bardhan, P.K. (1983) Labor-tying in a Poor Agrarian Economy: A Theoretical and
Empirical Analysis The Quarterly Journal of Economics 98 (3): 501-514
Lanjouw, Jean Olson. 1998. “Information and the Operation of Markets: Tests Based on
a General Equilibrium Model of Land Leasing in India.” Journal of Development
Economics.
Marcel Fafchamps and John Pender (2006) "Land Lease Markets and Agricultural
Efficiency in Ethiopia", Journal of African Economies, 15(2): 251-84.
Klaus Deininger & Daniel Ayalew Ali & Tekie Alemu, 2008. "Assessing the Functioning
of Land Rental Markets in Ethiopia," Economic Development and Cultural Change,
University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(1), pages 67-100, October.
8. Institutions: Incentives and institutional persistence
Toolkit: Regression Discontinuity Design and Instrumental Variables Estimation
Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson and James Robinson (2006) “Institutions as a
Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth” in Philippe Aghion and Steven Durlauf eds.
Handbook of Economic Growth, Amsterdam; North-Holland. *Bandiera, Oriana. 2007. "Land Tenure, Investment Incentives, and the Choice of
Techniques: Evidence from Nicaragua" The World Bank Economic Review, 21 (3): 487508
*Timothy Besley (1995): “Property Rights and Investment Incentives: Theory and
Evidence from Ghana”, in Journal of Political Economy, 103.3, pp. 903-937.
Hanan G. Jacoby, Guo Li, Scott Rozelle (2002), “The Hazards of Expropriation: Tenure
Insecurity and Investment in Rural China” American Economic Review, Vol. 92, No. 5,
pp. 1420-1447
Chris Udry and Marcus Goldstein (2009). “The Profits of Power: Land Rights and
Agricultural Investment in Ghana.” Journal of Political Economy.
*Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A (2001). “The Colonial Origins of
Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation.” The American Economic
Review, 91(5), 1369-1401. Albouy, D. Y. (2012). The colonial origins of comparative development: an empirical
investigation: comment. The American Economic Review, 102(6), 3059-3076. Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., & Robinson, J. A. (2012). The colonial origins of comparative
development: An empirical investigation: Reply. The American Economic Review,
102(6), 3077-3110.
*Melissa Dell. The persistent effects of Peru's mining mita. Econometrica, 78(6): 18631903, 2010.
*Nathan Nunn. “The long-term effects of Africa's slave trades”. Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 123(1): 139-176, 2008
Buera, F. J. and Y. Shin (2013). “Financial Frictions and the Persistence of History”.
Journal of Political Economy, 121(2), 221-272.
Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer, "History, Institutions and Economic Performance:
the Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India." American Economic Review 95,
no. 4 (September 2005): 1190-1213.
*Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. “Pre-colonial Ethnic Institutions and
Contemporary African Development.” Forthcoming in Econometrica
9. Social ties: Informal exchange, information transmission and societal divisions
Toolkit: Network analysis
*Greif, Avner, "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: The
Maghribi Traders' Coalition," American Economic Review, 83(3), 1993, pp.525-548.
*Abhijit Banerjee & Arun G. Chandrasekhar & Esther Duflo & Matthew O. Jackson,
2012. "The Diffusion of Microfinance," NBER Working Papers 17743, National Bureau
of Economic Research, Inc.
Genicot, G. and Ray, D., “Group Formation in Risk-Sharing Arrangements,” Review of
Economic Studies, 70(1): 87-113.
Ligon, Ethan & Thomas, Jonathan P & Worrall, Tim, 2002. "Informal Insurance
Arrangements with Limited Commitment: Theory and Evidence from Village
Economies," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(1), pages 209-44,
January.
Robert M. Townsend. “Risk and Insurance in Village India” Econometrica, Vol. 62, No. 3.
(May, 1994), pp. 539-591.
Fafchamps, M. and Lund, S., (2003), “Risk-sharing Networks in Rural Philippines”,
Journal of Development Economics, 71(2): 261-87.
Fafchamps, Marcel, “Spontaneous Markets, Networks, and Social Capital:
Lessons from Africa”, in The Microeconomics of Institutions, Tim Besley and Raji
Jayaraman (eds.), MIT Press, 2010.
Munshi, Kaivan (2003). “Networks in the Modern Economy: Mexican Migrants in the
U.S. Labor
Market”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118:2, pp. 549-597.
LaFerrara.E (2003) "Kin Groups and Reciprocity: A Model of Credit Transactions in
Ghana", American Economic Review 93: 1730-51.
*Cai, Jing, Alain de Janvry, and Elisabeth Sadoulet. 2014. “Social Networks and the
Decision to Insure.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Easterly, William & Levine, Ross, 1997. "Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic
Divisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 112(4), pages 1203-50,
November.
*Miguel, Edward and Mary Kay Gugerty. (2005). "Ethnic diversity, social sanctions, and
public goods in Kenya", Journal of Public Economics, 89, 2325-68
Amanda Lea Robinson (2013) “Internal Borders: Ethnic Diversity and Market
Segmentation in Malawi” Working Paper.
10. Governance: Public investment and corruption
*Dinkelman, Taryn. (2011). “The Effects of Rural Electrification on Employment: New
Evidence from South Africa”, American Economic Review 101(7):3078-3108.
Faber, Benjamin (2014). “Trade Integration, Market Size and Industrialization: Evidence
from China’s National Trunk Highway System.” Review of Economic Studies, 81, pp.
1046-1070.
Timothy Besley, and Torsten Persson, “Taxation and Development”, Chapter 2 of
Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 5, Ed. by Alan J. Auerbach, Raj Chetty, Martin
Feldstein and Emmanuel Saez, 2013.
*Daniel Berger, “Taxes, Institutions and Local Governance: Evidence from a Natural
Experiment in Colonial Nigeria”, 2009
Huillery, Elise. "History matters: The long-term impact of colonial public investments in
French West Africa." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics (2009): 176-215.
Banerjee, Abhijit V. "A Theory of Misgovernance." Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.
CXII, Issue 4 (November 1997).
Manacorda, Marco, Edward Miguel and Andrea Vigorito. 2011. “Government Transfers
and Political Support.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
Besley, Timothy and Robin Burgess (2002). “The Political Economy of Government
Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India.” Quarterly Journal of Economics.
117(4), 1415-1452.
*Ferraz, Claudio, and Frederico Finan (2008). “Exposing Corrupt Politicians: The Effect
of Brazil’s Publicly Released Audits on Electoral Outcomes.” Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 123(2), 703-745.
*Olken, Benjamin (2007). “Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in
Indonesia,” Journal of Political Economy, 115(2), 200-249.
Vicente, Pedro (2013), "Is Vote Buying Effective? Evidence from a Field Experiment in
West Africa?" Economic Journal. 11. Poverty alleviation: Equity and efficiency
*Benabou, R. (1996), ‘Equity and Efficiency in Human Capital Investment: The Local
Connection’, Review of Economic Studies, 62.
Besley, T., and Coate, S. (1992), ‘Workfare versus Welfare: Incentive Arguments for
Work Requirements in Poverty-Alleviation Programs’, American Economic Review, 82.
Hoff, K, (1996), ‘Market Failures and the Distribution of Wealth: A Perspective from the
Economics of Information’, Politics and Society, 24.
*Dasgupta, P., and Ray, D. (1986), ‘Inequality as a Determinant of Malnutrition and
Unemployment: Theory’, Economic Journal, 96.
Lipton, M., and Ravallion, M. (1995), ‘Poverty and Policy’, in J. Behrman and T. N.
Srinivasan (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics, iiiA. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Lin.J.Y (1992)“Rural Reforms and Agricultural Growth in China”, American Economic
Review 82: 34-51. *Banerjee, Abhijit, Paul Gertler and Maitresh Ghatak (2002), "Empowerment and
Efficiency: Tenancy Reform in West Bengal," Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 110 (2),
pp 239-280.
*Besley T.and Burgess R. (2000) "LAND REFORM, POVERTY REDUCTION, AND
GROWTH: EVIDENCE FROM INDIA." The Quarterly Journal of Economics.
12. Project presentations: Topics to be determined
Some useful papers on methods.
Chamberlain, Gary, Griliches Zvi, and D. Intriligator Michael. 1984. "Panel data." In
Handbook of Econometrics: Elsevier.
Abadie, Alberto, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller. "Synthetic Control Methods
for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control
Program." Journal of the American Statistical Association 105.490 (2010): 493-505.
Angrist, Joshua D. and Jorn-Steffen Pischke, “The Credibility Revolution in Empirical
Economics: How Better Research Design Is Taking the Con out of Econometrics,”
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2010, 24 (2), 3–30.
Marianne Bertrand, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2004. “How Much Should
We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates?” Quarterly Journal of Economics
(February):249-275.
Keane, M. P. (2010). "Structural vs. Atheoretic Approaches to Econometrics." Journal of
Econometrics.
Stephen Donald and Kevin Lang. 2007. “Inference with Difference-in-Differences and
Other Panel Data.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 89 (2):221-233.
Imbens, Guido W., and Thomas Lemieux. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to
practice." Journal of Econometrics 142.2 (2008): 615-635.
Lee, David S., and Thomas Lemieux. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in
Economics." Journal of Economic Literature 48 (2010): 281-355.
Caliendo, Marco, and Sabine Kopeinig. "Some practical guidance for the
implementation of propensity score matching." Journal of economic surveys 22.1
(2008): 31-72.
Duncan E. Thomas, Elizabeth Frankenberg, et al. (2001). "Lost but Not Forgotten:
Attrition and Follow-up in the Indonesia Family Life Survey." The Journal of Human
Resources 36(3): 556-92.
Murray, M. P. 2006. "Avoiding Invalid Instruments and Coping with Weak Instruments."
Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (4):111-32.
Guido Imbens and Joshua Angrist. 1994. “Identification and Estimation of Local
Average Treatment Effects.” Econometrica Vol. 62 No. 2 (March):467-475.
Hahn, J., and J. Hausman. 2003. "Weak Instruments: Diagnosis and Cures in Empirical
Econometrics." American Economic Review 93 (2):118-25.
Ravallion, Martin. 2008. “Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs”, Chapter 59, in T. Paul
Schultz and John Strauss, ed Handbook of Development Economics, vol.4. pp. 3831-3839
Imbens, G.W. and J.M. Wooldridge (2009), “Recent Developments in the Econometrics
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