Aims: The aim of this unit is to provide an in-depth understanding of selected contemporary issues affecting the economies of selected low and middle income countries. Whereas Development Economics 2 aims to provide a broad overview of the subject, this unit provides an opportunity to specialise in its application to specific issues and countries, to analyse detailed empirical material, and to analyse economic policy within a broader political economy framework.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the unit, students should have a clearer sense of both the strengths and limitations of economic theory and empirical analysis as tools for addressing current development policy issues. They should also have a stronger sense of the diversity of problems and policy issues facing low and middle income countries, and improved skills in using library resources to research a specific country/region and topic.
Skills:
* Ability to apply theory (of economic development) to selected country experience.
* Ability to review critically empirical research relating to specific countries and policy issues, then to define and then answer a question relating to this material.
* Ability to review critically and to synthesise material from different schools of thought within economics and the social sciences more widely.
Content:
Contemporary policy options (at global, national and sub-national levels) with respect to promoting economic development in these countries. Recent economic performance of selected countries in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Examples include growth, inequality and poverty; fertility; agricultural development; food security, malnutrition and famines; distributional impacts of liberalisation; education and health policy; labour markets; comparative analysis of economic performance across countries and states; approachyes to management of Dutch Disease; conflict and reconstruction. Key reading is from recent editions of relevant journals: Journal of Development Economics, Economic Development and Cultural Change, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Review of Development Economics, Development and Change, Journal of African Economics, Economic and Political Weekly and more.
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