87167 - International Development Economics

Learning outcomes

This is a course is an applied course on international development economics, organised around a few selected topics. The aim of the course is to offer the theoretical and analytical tools is to understand the different interpretations of social and economic development - in its evolving features - both at the country and at the international level. With the objective of providing the basic context for correctly framing the Sustainable Development Goals, the course focuses on issues such as poverty, hunger, inequality, migration and unbalanced development. The experience of the so-called emerging countries will be one of the privileged points of view. Students will be able to acquire the ability to tackle the problems of economic development and competition in an applied and comparative perspective, with thematic in-depth applications.

Course contents

This is an advanced and critical course on issues of international development in light of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The 30-hour (15 lectures) course covers the following topics, analyzing and comparing different positions:

1. Poverty definitions and measures. The uni-dimensional and the multi-dimensional approaches to poverty measurement.
2. Poverty: the statistical evidence. Short and long-run tendencies. The important books on poverty.
3. Economic inequality: definitions and measures.
4. The Kuznets curve: the relationship between income growth and inequality.
5. The debate after Kuznets. Kuznets cycles.
   
6. Is the world inequality increasing? The debate. World inequality recent trends.
7. Inequality in income and wealth in the long run: Piketty’s contribution.
8. World inequality recent trends. Some important recent books on inequality.
9. Climate change and development: who and what is causing it. The scientific debate and the international conventions, 
10. Why we have a climate change inequality.
11. Assessing the consequences of climate change: economic effects, social effects (and a special focus on infectious diseases).
12. Assessing the consequences of climate change: migrations; wars and conflicts; destitution and poverty.
13. How has the world economic order changed in the last two centuries
14. Where is the world heading: globalization and the current international economic order
15. International relations, the economic order and the new geography of world economic power

 

 

Readings/Bibliography

There are no mandatory text-books for this course.

All articles, references and links will be available on the course web-page.

Teaching methods

Lectures in class (in English) with lecture notes and slides available for the students (on the course web-page)

Assessment methods

A written exam (in English) with open essay-questions of the course main topics (60% of the final grade).

One short essay (in English) on any topic related to the course (40% of the final grade)

Teaching tools

Video projector and a internet-connected computer.

Office hours

See the website of Pier Giorgio Ardeni