Development economics
Development economics is a branch of economics that deals with economic aspects of the development process in low- and middle- income countries. Its focus is not only on methods of promoting economic development, economic growth and structural change but also on improving the potential for the mass of the population, for example, through health, education and workplace conditions, whether through public or private channels.[1]
This article is about the academic field. For the broader context, see Economic development.
Development economics involves the creation of theories and methods that aid in the determination of policies and practices and can be implemented at either the domestic or international level.[2] This may involve restructuring market incentives or using mathematical methods such as intertemporal optimization for project analysis, or it may involve a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods.[3] Common topics include growth theory, poverty and inequality, human capital, and institutions.[4]
Unlike in many other fields of economics, approaches in development economics may incorporate social and political factors to devise particular plans.[5] Also unlike many other fields of economics, there is no consensus on what students should know.[6] Different approaches may consider the factors that contribute to economic convergence or non-convergence across households, regions, and countries.[7]
Growth indicator controversy[edit]
Per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP per head) is used by many developmental economists as an approximation of general national well-being. However, these measures are criticized as not measuring economic growth well enough, especially in countries where there is much economic activity that is not part of measured financial transactions (such as housekeeping and self-homebuilding), or where funding is not available for accurate measurements to be made publicly available for other economists to use in their studies (including private and institutional fraud, in some countries).
Even though per-capita GDP as measured can make economic well-being appear smaller than it really is in some developing countries, the discrepancy could be still bigger in a developed country where people may perform outside of financial transactions an even higher-value service than housekeeping or homebuilding as gifts or in their own households, such as counseling, lifestyle coaching, a more valuable home décor service, and time management. Even free choice can be considered to add value to lifestyles without necessarily increasing the financial transaction amounts.
More recent theories of Human Development have begun to see beyond purely financial measures of development, for example with measures such as medical care available, education, equality, and political freedom. One measure used is the Genuine Progress Indicator, which relates strongly to theories of distributive justice. Actual knowledge about what creates growth is largely unproven; however recent advances in econometrics and more accurate measurements in many countries are creating new knowledge by compensating for the effects of variables to determine probable causes out of merely correlational statistics.
professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark Medal winner.
Daron Acemoglu
professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Collège de France, co-authored textbook in economic growth, forwarded Schumpeterian growth, and established creative destruction theories mathematically with Peter Howitt.
Philippe Aghion
professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Director of the International Growth Centre.
Oriana Bandiera
professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Director of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Abhijit Banerjee
professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, author of texts in both trade and development economics, and editor of the Journal of Development Economics from 1985 to 2003.
Pranab Bardhan
professor of economics at Cornell University and author of Analytical Development Economics.
Kaushik Basu
former professor of economics at the London School of Economics, author of Dissent on Development.
Peter Thomas Bauer
professor of economics at the London School of Economics, and commissioner of the UK National Infrastructure Commission.
Tim Besley
is the founding president of the Center for Global Development (CGD) in Washington, DC, USA, and former executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank.
Nancy Birdsall
professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Director of the International Growth Centre.
Robin Burgess
author of The Bottom Billion which attempts to tie together a series of traps to explain the self-fulfilling nature of poverty at the lower end of the development scale.
Paul Collier
professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Clark Medal winner.
Dave Donaldson
professor of economics at Princeton University and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Angus Deaton
Director of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009 MacArthur Fellow, 2010 Clark Medal winner, advocate for field experiment, co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Esther Duflo
Israeli-American economist at Brown University; editor-in-chief of the Journal of Economic Growth, the principal journal in economic growth. Developer of the unified growth theory, the newest alternative to theories of endogenous growth.
Oded Galor
Canadian economist at Brown University; past president of the Canadian Economics Association, introduced the concept of Schumpeterian growth and established creative destruction theory mathematically with Philippe Aghion.
Peter Howitt
American economist at Northwestern University; co-director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies; founded Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a New Haven, Connecticut, based research outfit dedicated to creating and evaluating solutions to social and international development problems.
Dean Karlan
University Professor at the University of Chicago, co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
Michael Kremer
Chinese economist at Peking University; former chief economist of World Bank, one of the most prominent Chinese economists.
Justin Yifu Lin
professor of computation and behavioural science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Sendhil Mullainathan
professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and has held several prominent research positions at the World Bank.
Lant Pritchett
Senior Research Associate at the Environmental Change Institute of the University of Oxford, author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, formerly economist for the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report and Senior Researcher at Oxfam.
Kate Raworth
professor of economics at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Studies.
James Robinson
professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, has written extensively on globalization.
Dani Rodrik
a professor at Yale University and director of Economic Growth Center at Yale
Mark Rosenzweig
professor at Columbia University, author of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time (preview) and Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.
Jeffrey Sachs
Indian economist, first Asian Nobel Prize winner for economics, author of Development as Freedom, known for incorporating philosophical components into economic models.[50]
Amartya Sen
professor of economics at the London School of Economics, former President of the British Academy and former World Bank Chief Economist.
Nicholas Stern
professor at Columbia University and Nobel Prize winner and former chief economist at the World Bank.
Joseph Stiglitz
a co-originator of Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty measure who also played a significant role in the development and popularization of social accounting matrix.
Erik Thorbecke
known for the Todaro and Harris–Todaro models of migration and urbanization; Economic Development.
Michael Todaro
professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology known for his Thai Project, a model for many other applied and theoretical projects in economic development.
Robert M. Townsend
author of The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism and The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else.
Hernando de Soto
professor at Georgetown University and author of The Great Surge-The Ascent of the Developing World.
Steven Radelet
World Bank Publications, Washington DC (2009), ISBN 978-0-8213-7255-5
Development Economics through the Decades: A Critical Look at 30 Years of the World Development Report
World Bank Publications, Washington DC (2009), ISBN 978-0-8213-7270-8
The Complete World Development Report, 1978–2009 (Single User DVD): 30th Anniversary Edition
Behrman, J.R. (2001). "Development, Economics of," , pp. 3566–3574 Abstract.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Bell, Clive (1987). "Development economics". . 1: 818–26.
The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics
(1992). "Third World Economic Development". In David R. Henderson (ed.). Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (1st ed.). Library of Economics and Liberty. OCLC 317650570, 50016270, 163149563
Crook, Clive
Easterly, William (2002), Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, The MIT Press
Ben Fine and Jomo K.S. (eds, 2005), The New Development Economics: Post Washington Consensus Neoliberal Thinking, Zed Books
Peter Griffiths (2003), The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank, Zed Books
K.S. Jomo (2005), Pioneers of Development Economics: Great Economists on Development, Zed Books – the contributions of economists such as Marshall and Keynes, not normally considered development economists
(2012). The Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-15589-0.
Lin, Justin Yifu
Gerald M. Meier (2005), Biography of a Subject: An Evolution of Development Economics, Oxford University Press
Gerald M. Meier, Dudley Seers [editors] (1984), , World Bank
Pioneers in Development
Dwight H. Perkins, Steven Radelet, Donald R. Snodgrass, Malcolm Gillis and Michael Roemer (2001). Economics of Development, 5th edition, New York: W. W. Norton.
Jeffrey D. Sachs (2005), The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Penguin Books
(1998). Development Economics, Princeton University Press, . Other editions: Spanish, Antoni Bosch. 2002 Chinese edition, Beijing University Press. 2002, Indian edition, Oxford, 1998. Description, table of contents, and excerpt, ch. 1.
Debraj Ray
World Institute for Development Economics Research Publications/Discussion Papers
; Rees, Gareth (1998). Economic Development, 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-72228-2.
Smith, Charles
and Stephen C. Smith, Economic Development, 10th Ed., Addison-Wesley, 2008. Description.
Michael Todaro
Handbook of Development Economics
T. N. Srinivasan
a list of resources for development economics.
Development Economics and Economic Development
(The Economist).
Technology in emerging economies
a list of research institutions specialized in Development at Ideas.Repec