Behavioral Economics of Poverty and Development

Catalog description

This course will introduce students to the study of economic development and poverty alleviation, with a special focus on recent insights from the intersection of psychology and economics. We will primarily focus on the health, microfinance, agriculture, and education sectors in developing countries. The course will have a methodological component largely centered on using experiments to evaluate interventions and policies that apply to households, small firms, and farms. While we will cover standard economic approaches, we will give extra attention to how a behavioral lens can help in both understanding development issues (e.g. barriers to household risk management) and in designing effective interventions (e.g. the timing of fertilizer sales). Prerequisites: (73-100 or 88-220 or 73-102 ) and 36-202