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.
In this course, we will cover some of the key theoretical and empirical ideas for why and how politics and institutions affect economic development. You will look at a variety of examples drawn from throughout the developing world and learn empirical techniques and econometric tools to study them. By the end of the course, you’ll have a better understanding of core theoretical concepts in political economy and the role of empirical evidence in economics.
What you'll learn
The course will investigate the following topics:
- Political economy and economic development
- Role of lenders and democratic institutions
- Deep determinants of economics development
- Voting theory, evidence, agency, and practices
- Efficiency, decision-making, and industrial organization of corruption
- Service delivery, discrimination, and affirmative action
- Media, social media, and political protests
Access the full syllabus here.
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.
Course Readiness Check:
Our course readiness checks help you determine if you should review key concepts before starting the course.
Please use this link to access the course readiness check and answer key.
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.