Development Economics 01:220:439
Rutgers University, Professor Ira N. Gang, Email: gang at.rutgers.edu. Please include 439 in the subject line
Special Note on Text vs. No Text and How to Approach the Material in this Course.
Recently there has been a flurry of quite good new
textbooks in Development Economics. Depending on how deeply you
want to delve into the material, you may want to purchase and consult
one or more of these. Read this note completely to see how I
expect you to use –or not use— this text and the other
material I have made available.
Many students ask for a text. I have set up the class so that you
do NOT NEED to PURCHASE, RENT, or USE any text. THE OPTIONAL
TEXT AND INDEED ALL OF THE READINGS are there to reinforce and expand
on the lectures, to provide more examples and interpretations than I
can cover in lecture; to provide you with the opportunity to go
beyond what we talk about in class. In making up the examinations
I do NOT look at a text or any of the readings. The questions on
the exams are drawn from what I cover during my lectures. Will
every question on the exam be on something I mentioned in class?
Well, yes and no! Yes in the sense that I do not go elsewhere to
look for material on which to ask questions. No in the sense
that, as always, I expect you to have mastered the material we
discuss in class prior to the exam and use that as a basis for
answering further questions on the topics. This is what an upper
level course in Economics is all about. This is why it has all
the pre-requisites. I strongly recommend that you form "study groups"
with other members of the class and review the material and quiz one
another regularly.
Development Economics: Theory and practice
by Alain de Janvry, Elisabeth Sadoulet
1st edition © 2016 – Routledge ISBN-13: 978-1138885318
2nd edition © 2021 – Routledge ISBN-13: 9780367456474
Also available as and ebook:
https://www.routledge.com/Development-Economics-Theory-and-Practice/Janvry-Sadoulet/p/book/9780367456474
[This is the Routledge website for the 2nd edition. Ther first edition is fine and there are many used versions out there.]
Will you do better on the exam if you study this text? Most
likely, as long as you do so in addition to coming to lectures and
studying that material. There are several texts in development
economics and the same comment applies to those, such as the texts by
Debraj Ray, Michael Todaro and Stephen Smith, Julie Schaffner, Gerard
Roland, among others.
Would I buy this text if I was taking this course? Probably, but
I always read the complete set of recommended readings. It is much more
important to do something I have yet to convince many students to do: I
very strongly recommend that right from the beginning of the course you
find yourself a set of study partners and meet with them
regularly. You will find that each of you pick up on different
aspects of the class and probably have different material in the notes
you take from class. Test each other! Explain the material to
each other!