Development Economics

Reading order

1. Development: A Very Short Introduction

   Ian Goldin Beginner

   A brief introduction to the study of development by an economist who has worked in development policy. It asks what development means, how it happens and why some countries became rich while others remain poor, and then examines what governments, aid agencies and the international system can do to accelerate it.

   Prerequisites: No background in economics is needed.

2. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

   Abhijit V. Banerjee; Esther Duflo Beginner

   A general-audience book by two development economists that draws on randomised field experiments to explain how people living in poverty make decisions about food, health, schooling, family size, savings and work. It replaces grand debates about aid with specific, testable questions and shows how small design details of programmes change outcomes.

   Prerequisites: None; the book assumes no economics and explains each concept as it arises.

3. Development Economics

   Debraj Ray Intermediate

   A theory-oriented textbook that synthesises the economics of developing countries around a few recurring ideas: history and expectations, coordination failures, incomplete markets and the interplay of inequality with growth. Ray builds simple formal models for each topic and confronts them with cross-country and micro evidence, giving readers a coherent framework rather than a list of stylised facts.

   Prerequisites: Introductory economics, which the publisher states is all that is required, and comfort with algebra and diagrams; calculus is used sparingly and explained where needed.

4. Economic Development

   Michael P. Todaro; Stephen C. Smith Intermediate

   A policy-oriented undergraduate textbook on development economics that combines classic and modern theories of growth and structural change with evidence and country case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It treats poverty, inequality, population, health, education, agriculture, the environment, trade and finance as connected parts of the development process.

   Prerequisites: An introductory economics course is sufficient; the analysis relies on diagrams and verbal argument rather than advanced mathematics.

5. The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity

   Ricardo Hausmann; César A. Hidalgo; Sebastián Bustos; Michele Coscia; Alexander Simoes; Muhammed A. Yildirim Intermediate Open access

   Read the official free edition ↗

   An open development-economics atlas linking productive knowledge, export diversity and product-space networks to possible paths of economic diversification.

   Prerequisites: Introductory economics and confidence reading tables, rankings and network diagrams are useful. Basic statistics helps distinguish an association from a causal policy claim. You do not need to derive every index before reading, but should investigate what export data measure and what they leave unobserved.

6. Development Economics: Theory and Practice

   Alain de Janvry; Elisabeth Sadoulet Advanced

   A graduate-level textbook that brings together the theory of economic development, its empirical evidence and the design of development policy. Written by two researchers in agricultural and development economics, it connects growth, poverty and inequality with the microeconomics of households and markets and with the methods used to evaluate programmes.

   Prerequisites: Intermediate microeconomics and macroeconomics, an undergraduate development economics course and some econometrics are assumed.

7. Development Microeconomics

   Pranab Bardhan; Christopher Udry Advanced

   A concise graduate text on the microeconomic theory of poor economies. Bardhan and Udry use models of households, contracts and imperfect information to explain how land, labour, credit and insurance markets work in rural settings, why particular institutions such as sharecropping and interlinked contracts arise, and what follows for policy.

   Prerequisites: Intermediate microeconomics with calculus and an introductory development economics course are assumed; basic game theory helps.