Why development economics

By studying development economics, you will have the opportunity to apply the tools of economic analysis to the problems and challenges facing less-developed countries, and to begin to understand why some countries have been able to go through a process of economic and human development whilst others have languished. Previous: Agricultural Economics. Next: Econometrics. All rights reserved. Development Economics. DEC is the premier research and data arm of the World Bank.

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He has been an NBER affiliate since Read summaries of presentations at the latest program meeting Read the latest Program Report Affiliated scholars. Program Co-Directors. To do so, there are a number of characteristics of Development Economics. These are setting, focus and nature of inference.

Setting — It very consciously takes place in developing countries. However this statement opens up a lot of debate because many challenges faced in developing countries also manifest in developed countries — albeit with lesser incidence.

Hence, development economics is also relevant in developed countries. In terms of ethics and institutions, controversial activities such as share buybacks [1] are actually much more concentrated in developed countries.

Focus — It is intensely concerned with identification of causal effects. Examples are the effects of deworming on child health or the effects of land reform on welfare.

Nature of inference — The nature of inference is to an extent atheoretical. We may interpret this to mean that the subject is mostly concerned about field practicalities and realities that may not necessarily conform to theory. We may interpret this to mean that due to imperfect markets in developing countries, outcomes do not always mirror the hypothetical view. While in advanced countries a sitting government may be expected to behave in a rational manner that makes taxpayers happy to the extent that voters who are also the taxpayers will be able to vote it into power again at the next election, the same expectation may not hold in developing countries.

A developing country may be trapped in a poor institutional environment such that the government may still secure an election victory even though tax payers are not happy.

Here are a few reasons:. In the end elections in some developing countries may be held to satisfy the principle theory yet the process is not effective and is just a window dressing exercise. We have discussed the nature of Development Economics as a subject or some of the attributes that define it. Let us now consider some of the characteristics of developing countries. We have already talked about some of them in the previous section.

Some of the most important features of developing countries are listed below and explained thereafter.