Advanced microeconomics course focussed on developing economies. Special attention is paid to the role of subsistence constraints and asymmetric information in credit, insurance and labour markets. The causes and remedies of child labour and infant mortality are examined in some detail.
Bardhan, P. and C. Udry (1999, 2001), Development Microeconomics, Oxford University Press
and
Cigno, A. and F. C. Rosati (2005, 2006), The Economics of Child Labour, Oxford University Press
Learning Objectives
Train the student in contemporary microeconomic analysis. Help develop in the student the ability to design or evaluate development policies.
Prerequisites
Good grounding in conventional microeconomics and familiarity with the standard mathematical techniques of economic theory (constrained optimization, analytical geometry).
Teaching Methods
Lectures with student-instructor interaction.
Further information
Regular attendance is strongly recommended.
Type of Assessment
Written examination with open questions.
Course program
1. General equilibrium (revision of standard 2X2X2 model).
2. Credit, uncertainty and insurance.
3. Asymmetric information: moral hazard and adverse selection.
4. Credit markets with moral hazard and adverse selection.
5. Interlinked commodity-credit contracts, informal insurance, microcredit.
6. Asset and land markets, agricultural contracts in the presence of risk and moral hazard
6. Labour markets, efficiency wages, interlinked employment-credit contracts, bonded labour, migration.
8. Inter-generational transfers, the family as a substitute for the credit market and the welfare state.
9. Education and child labour: causes and remedies.
10. Fertility and infant mortality, demographic transition.