Political Economy and Economic Development

About this course

The course is free to audit. Learners can take a proctored exam and earn a course certificate by paying a fee, which varies by ability to pay. Please scroll down for more information on the verified and audit track features and see FAQ articles for more information on the pricing structure. Enroll now in this course by selecting the "enroll now" button at the top of the page.

This is an ADVANCED elective course within the International Development Track of the MITx MicroMasters program in Data, Economics, and Design of Policy (DEDP), which provides a path toward the Master’s in DEDP at MIT. Five total courses (3 core, 2 electives) are needed to complete the International Development MicroMasters Program Credential in DEDP. For more information on DEDP MicroMasters program requirements, please visit our FAQ page.

In this class, we will study some of the key theoretical and empirical ideas for why and how politics and institutions affect economic development. We will also look at a variety of empirical examples drawn from throughout the developing world.

We have three basic goals for this class:

• Build a foundation for critical thinking about the role of political economy in understanding economic development.
• Understand some core theoretical concepts in political economy, with illustrations from developing countries.
• Understand empirical evidence in economics. What makes a good empirical study? How do we learn about the world empirically? What are some of the techniques we can use to better understand the world?

Course Previews:

Our course previews are meant to give prospective learners the opportunity to get a taste of the content and exercises that will be covered in each course. If you are new to these subjects, or eager to refresh your memory, each course preview also includes some available resources. These resources may also be useful to refer to over the course of the semester.

A score of 60% or above in the course previews indicates that you are ready to take the course, while a score below 60% indicates that you should further review the concepts covered before beginning the course.

Please use this link to access the syllabus and this link to access the course preview. Once you have completed this preview, use the answer key to check your answers.

Comparing the Audit and Certificate Tracks

(Click here for a text based version of this table.)

What you’ll learn

• Key theories and concepts in political economy and their application to studying economic development.
• Evidence from recent studies on the role of politics and institutions in economic development, and how to interpret their findings.
• Empirical techniques and econometric tools to study political economy and development.
• Data analysis using the software R.

Prerequisites

Basic understanding of statistics and familiarity with microeconomics will be helpful for this course. There are no prerequisites, but you may find it helpful to take 14.100x (Microeconomics) and 14.310x (Data Analysis for Social Scientists) before this course.