Teaching and Resources

This book grew, in part, out of years of teaching undergraduates and graduate students at MIT and elsewhere, and we hope that it can be used to support learning at various levels.

In the spring of 2011, we have been using the book for two courses: one, Challenges for World Poverty, an introductory course for students who do not have a background in economics. This course is a mix of lecture and discussion. Students read the book, as well as other papers, and they answer essay questions about the issues that they learn about. The second course, Foundations of Development Policies, is for advanced undergraduates and masters students.

In this section of the website, we provide the course materials from both. These materials include the lecture notes, assignments, and videos used throughout the course. We hope you will find this material useful as a supplementary resource to the book, and a way to enrich your learning experience.

Given that both courses are currently underway, this page will be regularly updated, so do check back often!

6.1 Lecture: Challenges of world poverty: Risk and insurance
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lecture 15 on risk and insurance from the spring 2011 MIT undergraduate course, The Challenges of World Poverty.

6.1 Lecture: Foundations of Development Policy: Risk
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lecture 14 on borrowing and saving from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy.

6.2 Lecture: Challenges of world poverty: Insurance
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lecture 16 on insurance from the spring 2011 MIT undergraduate course, The Challenges of World Poverty.

6.2 Lecture: Foundations of Development Policy: Insurance
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lecture 15 on the education decisions from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy.

6.3 Lecture: Foundations of Development Policy: Land (1)
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lecture 16 on land from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy.

6.4 Lecture: Foundations of Development Policy: Land (2)
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lecture 17 on land from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy.

Challenges of world poverty: Essay Questions on Risk
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Essay questions on risk from the spring 2011 MIT undergraduate course, The Challenges of World Poverty.

Foundations of Development Policy: Problem Set 7
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Problem set 7 from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy