Syllabus
Week 1: Introduction
- Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2007: The Economic Lives of the Poor, Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(1): 141-168 *
- Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2008: What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?, Journal of Economic Perspectives 22 (2): 3-28
- Mankiw, N. Gregory, David Romer, and David N. Weil. 1992: A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics 107 (2): 407-437*
- Dollar, David, Tatjana Kleineberg, and Art Kraay. 2016: Growth still is good for the Poor, European Economic Review 81: 68-85
- Ravallion, Martin. 2005: Inequality is Bad for the Poor, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3677
- Caselli, Francesco. 2005: Accounting for Cross-Country Income Differences, Chapter 9 in Handbook of Economic Growth Vol. 1, Part A: 679-741
- Caselli, Francesco. 2016: Accounting for Cross-Country Income Differences: Ten Years Later, World Development Report Background Paper, Governance and the Law
- Jayachandran, Seema. 2021: How Economic Development Influences the Environment, NBER Working Paper 29191
- Miguel, Edward, and Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak. 2021: The Economics of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poor Countries, NBER Working Paper 29339
Week 2: Poverty Traps
- Bandiera, Oriana, Robin Burgess, Narayan Das, Selim Gulesci, Imran Rasul, and Munshi Sulaiman. 2017: Labor Markets and Poverty in Village Economies, Quarterly Journal of Economics 132(2): 811-870 *
- Balboni, Clare, Oriana Bandiera, Robin Burgess, Maitreesh Ghatak and Anton Heil. 2019: Why do people stay poor?, Quarterly Journal of Economics 137(2): 785-844
- Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duflo, Nathanael Goldberg, Dean Karlan, Robert Osei, William Parienté, Jeremy Shapiro, Bram Thuysbaert, and Christopher Udry. (2015.c): A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor: Evidence from six countries, Science348 (6236): 772
- Kraay, Art, and David McKenzie. 2014: Do Poverty Traps Exist? Assessing the Evidence, Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (3): 127-148
- Haushofer, Johannes. 2019: Is there a Psychological Poverty Trap?, Working Paper, Stockholm University
- Rodrik, Dani. 2013: Unconditional Convergence in Manufacturing, Quarterly Journal of Economics 128 (1): 165-204
Week 3: Microfinance
- DeMel, Suresh, David McKenzie, and Christopher Woodruff. 2008: Returns to Capital in Microentreprises: Evidence from a Field Experiment, Quarterly Journal of Economics 123 (4): 1329-1372
- Keniston, Daniel. 2011: Experimental vs. Structural Estimates of the Return to Capital in Microentreprises, Working Paper, Yale
- Banerjee, Abhijit, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennester, and Cynthia Kinnan. 2015: The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation, AEJ: Applied Economics 7 (1): 22-53 *
- Banerjee, Abhijit., Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman. 2015.b: Six randomized evaluations of microcredit: Introduction and further steps, AEJ: Applied Economics. 7 (1): 1–21
- Meager, Rachel. 2019: Understanding the Average Impact of Microcredit Expansions: A Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of Seven Randomized Experiments, AEJ: Applied Economics 11 (1): 57-91
- Meager, Rachel. 2020: Aggregating Distributional Treatment Effects: A Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis of the Microcredit Literature, American Econ.Rev. (forthcoming)
- Breza, Emily, and Cynthia Kinnan. 2021: Measuring the Equilibrium Impacts of Credit: Evidence from the Indian Microfinance Crisis, Quarterly Journal of Economics 136 (3): 1447-1497
Week 4: Credit Markets and Property Rights.
- Karlan, Dean, and Jonathan Zinman. 2009: Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment, Econometrica 77 (6): 1993-2008 *
- Bryan, Gharad, Dean Karlan, and Jonathan Zinman. 2015: Referrals: Peer Screening and Enforcement in a Consumer Credit Field Experiment, AEJ: Microeconomics 7 (3): 174-204
- Gine, Xavier, and Dean Karlan. 2014: Group versus individual liability: Short and long term evidence from Philippine microcredit lending groups, Journal of Development Economics 107: 65-83 *
- Cramer, Kim Fe. 2022: Bank Presence and Health, Working Paper, LSE
- Dupas, Pascaline, and Jonathan Robinson. 2013: Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5 (1): 163-92.
- Afzal, Uzma, Giovanna d’Adda, Marcel Fafchamps, Simon Quinn, and Farah Said. 2018: Two Sides of the Same Rupee? Comparing Demand for Microcredit and Microsaving in a Framed Field Experiment in Rural Pakistan, Economic Journal 128 (614): 2161-2190
- Haushofer, Johannes, Matthieu Chemin, Chaning Jang, and Justin Abraham. 2020: Economic and Psychological Effects of Health Insurance and Cash Transfers: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Kenya, Journal of Development Economics 144 (R)
- Augsburg, Britta, Ralph De Haas, Heike Harmgart, and Costas Meghir. 2015. “The Impacts of Microcredit: Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina.” AEJ: Applied Economics 7 (1): 183–203. (R)
- Field, Erica, Rohini Pande, John Papp, and Natalia Rigol. 2013: Does the classic microfinance model discourage entrepreneurship among the poor? Experimental evidence from India”, AEJ: Applied Economics. 103 (6): 2196–2226 (R)
- Karlan, Dean, Robert Osei, Isaac Osei-Akoto, and Chrostopher Udry. 2014: Agricultural Decisions after Relaxing Credit and Risk Constraints, Quarterly Journal of Economics 129 (2): 597-652 (R)
- Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. 2014: Do Firms Want to Borrow More? Testing Credit Constraints, Review of Economic Studies 81 (2): 572-607 (R)
Week 5: Education
- Muralidharan, Khartik. 2017: Field Experiments in Education in Developing Countries, in Handbook of Field Experiments Vol 2, Eds. A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, Elsevier
- Duflo, Esther. 2001: Schooling and Labor Market Consequences School Construction in Indonesia, American Economic Review 91 (4): 795-813 *
- Prashant Bharadwaj, Leah K Lakdawala, Nicholas Li 2020: Perverse Consequences of Well Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India’s Child Labor Ban, Journal of the European Economic Association 18 (3): 1158–1195 *
- Romero, Mauricio, Justin Sandefur, and Wayne Aaron Sandholtz. 2020: Outsourcing Education: Experimental Evidence from Liberia. American Economic Review 110(2): 364-400
- Heath, Rachel, and A. Mushfiq Mobarak. 2015: Manufacturing growth and the lives of Bangladeshi women, Journal of Development Economics, 115: 1-15
- Baird, Sarah, Craig McIntosh, and Berk Özler. 2011: Cash or Condition? Evidence from a Randomized Cash Transfer Program, Quarterly Journal of Economics 126 (4): 1709-1753. (R)
- Macours, Karen, and M. Caridad Araujo. 2021: Education, Income and Mobility: Experimental Impacts of Childhood Exposure to Progresa after 20 Years, Working Paper, Paris School of Economics (R)
- Duflo, Esther, Pascaline Dupas, and Michael Kremer. 2021: The Impact of Free Secondary Education: Experimental Evidence from Ghana. NBER Working Paper 28937 (R)
- Atkin, David. 2016: Endogenous Skill Acquisition and Export Manufacturing in Mexico, American Economic Review, 106 (8): 2046-85. (R)
- Almeida, Rita, Sarojini Hirschleifer, David McKenzie, and Cristobal Ridao-Cano. 2016: The Impact of Vocational Training for the Unemployed: Experimental Evidence from Turkey, Economic Journal, 126(597): 2115-2146. (R)
- Muralidharan, Karthik, Abhijeet Singh, and Alejandro J. Ganimian. 2019: Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India, American Economic Review 109 (4): 1426-1460. (R)
Week 6: Health
- Dupas, Pascaline, and Edward Miguel. 2017: Impacts and Determinants of Health Levels in Low-Income Countries, in Handbook of Field Experiments Vol 2, Eds. A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, Elsevier
- Kremer, Michael, and Edward Miguel. 2004: Worms: Identifying Impacts on Education and Health in the Presence of Treatment Externalities, Econometrica 72 (1), 159-217
- B