Political Economy and Economic Development
Explore why and how political institutions affect economic development, and apply key theories and empirical techniques to real-world examples ranging from voting and corruption to the role of the media.
Political Economy and Economic Development
Explore why and how political institutions affect economic development, and apply key theories and empirical techniques to real-world examples ranging from voting and corruption to the role of the media.
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.
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.
Meet your instructors
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Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics -
Professor of Economics
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee
Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics
Abhijit Banerjee is the winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. He was educated at the University of Calcutta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Harvard University. He is currently the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT. Banerjee is a past president of the Bureau for Research in the Economic Analysis of Development, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society, and has been a Guggenheim Fellow and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. He is the recipient of many awards, including the inaugural Infosys Prize in 2009, and has been an honorary advisor to many organizations including the World Bank and the government of India.
Benjamin Olken
Benjamin Olken
Professor of Economics
Benjamin Olken is a Professor of Economics at MIT. His research focuses on political economy and public sector issues in developing countries, with a particular interest in corruption. He is a faculty Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, Co-Scientific Director of the Lab’s Southeast Asia office in Jakarta, and Co-Chair of the Lab’s Governance Initiative. Olken received his BA _summa cum laude _as a double-major in Mathematics and Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University in 1997, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 2004. In 1997-1998 he was a Henry Luce Scholar, living in Jakarta, Indonesia. He joined the MIT faculty as a tenured faculty member in 2008, directly after a three-year term as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows and a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at the NBER.