Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

  • Critically Analyze Academic Literature: Present and evaluate recent research on development issues, understanding its implications and limitations.
  • Conduct Independent Research: Formulate a research question, design a study, analyze data, and write a comprehensive research paper on a development economics topic.
  • Understand the use of  Advanced Econometric Techniques: understand how specific econometric tools are used to address research questions and interpret empirical results.
  • Engage in Scholarly Debate: Participate in informed discussions about contemporary development challenges and policy solutions.

 

Goals

The objective of the course is to familiarize students with applied microeconomic modelling on current development issues and common econometric techniques used in development economics. A particular emphasis will be put on the particularities of data coming from developing countries (LDC). Students will be introduced to the techniques and the approaches currently in use for active scientific research in development economics so as to fully appreciate the variety and the complementarity of these approaches.

This class is part of the Belgian Doctoral School in Economics, and is therefore also open to Phd students that would like to complement their training with an introduction to development research issues and approaches.

It is taught by: 

Jean-Marie Baland jean-marie.baland@unamur.be

Guilhem Cassan guilhem.cassan@unamur.be

Catherine Guirkinger  catherine.guirkinger@unamur.be

Content

Possible topics are discussed at the beginning of the class, and correpond to up to date current research projects of the professors involved. Among these, let us mention, for instance, the microeconomics of extended families, poverty and microcredit, child labor, political corruption and land ownership, informal risk sharing networks, castes and classes in India, affirmative action policies...

This class is also open to Phd students that would like to complement their training with an up to date introduction to development research issues and approaches.

Assessment method

The evaluation will be based on (1) a research essay, the definition of an empirical research project (what is the starting idea, how to test it, what type of data to use, and given the data, what types of biases can we expect?), and on (2) oral presentations of two papers made in the class, and a referee report on one the papers.

  1. The research essay

The essay will be made in two steps. A first short report (max 2 pages) , detailing an empirical project, specifying a clear research question, an identification strategy and identifying a data set or a data collection strategy. These projects are presented in class and oral reactions are then be given (‘as if’ you were giving a research seminar!).

You will then prepare a full written version of your project, no longer than 5 pages, specifying the research question, the theoretical mechanism, backed by a short literature review, a description of the data sets (or a draft formulation of the questions you would add to a standard questionnaire as well as a sampling strategy), the identification strategy and a discussion of its weaknesses and the potential econometric problems you may face. 

  1. The Presentations and the report

Each student will also make an oral presentation of a paper on the theme of the year (chosen from a list of suggested paper)

S/he will also prepare another presentation on a general paper in development economics, based on a set of slides (also from a list).Each presentation should last about 15 minutes, followed by 5 to 10 minutes of questions and reactions by all the students and the professors. All students are required to attend all the presentations. The idea is to present the paper as if you were one of the author of the paper, in the style of a short seminar.

On top of this, you will be required to write a referee report of the ‘general’ paper you presented. This report should not exceed three pages.

  1. You place the paper in the literature (why is this paper important?) and you assess its impact on the research that followed.
  2. You evaluate the intrinsic qualities of the paper. This implies discussing the following aspects: question asked, structure of the model, main assumptions and main results. You should also indicate ways to improve the paper, and be critical about (1) its intrinsic consistency (assumptions, results, identification strategy, alternative or robustness tests that were not explored…) and (2) the relevance of its results (generalization, implications, changes in our way of thinking about an issue,…). In doing so, your comments have to be made ‘within’ the model, ‘within’ the paper. This implies that you cannot criticize a paper because its assumptions are not ‘realistic’ for instance, or because it does not integrate some important feature. The importance of a feature can only be judged with respect to the results and their generalization. For an empirical paper, you generally have to stick to the data source available to the authors, and assess whether they used the best approach given the data.

 

Sources, references and any support material

complete power point presentations, that can be compemented by the reading of some of the papers covered by the class. research work presented by students on the basis of the material offered. Discussion of research projects.

Language of instruction

Anglais