Teaching the Book

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!

Foundations of Development Policy: Problem Set 4
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Problem set 4 from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy, to be accompanied by two datasets from the paper Banerjee, et al. "Remedying Education: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments in India".

Foundations of Development Policy: Problem Set 5
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Problem set 5 from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy.

Foundations of Development Policy: Problem Set 6
Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo / Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Problem set 6 from the spring 2011 MIT masters course, Foundations of Development Policy.

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

Millennium Villages

The Millennium Villages initiative is conducted by the research and policy teams of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. From the website's FAQs: "Millennium Villages are designed to demonstrate how the eight Millennium Development Goals can be met in rural Africa within five to ten years through community-led development."

Statcompiler

From the website: "STATcompiler is an online database tool that allows users to create customized tables of data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). STATcompiler makes avaulable over 130 indicators from 200+ surveys in 70+ countries."

William Easterly / December 9, 2007 / ig2:us

A presentation by Prof. William Easterly on aid skepticism and African development.

Satyajit Ray

The "fine, elegiac" (New York Times) 1973 film by noted Bengali director, Satyajit Ray. It explores the Bengal famine of 1943. In Bengali with English subtitles.

Paul Kagame / July 25, 2009 / CNN

A CNN interview with President of Rwanda Paul Kagame, who discusses his plans to decrease Rwandan dependence on foreign aid.

Esther Duflo / March 18, 2010 / POP! TECH

A POP!TECH presentation by Prof. Esther Duflo on randomized evaluations.