Development
Economics, Princeton University Press 1998. Disclaimer
If you're looking for a comprehensive page in Development Economics this isn't it. Development is a passionate interest of mine, but it isn't what I do all or even most of the time. This page contains some of my own research which I think is development-related, and no more than that (no well-maintained external links in particular).
Teaching Material in Development Economics
Development Economics, March 2007, forthcoming in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, edited by Lawrence Blume and Steven Durlauf.
Development
Economics, Princeton University Press 1998.
Answers to end-of-chapter problems in Development Economics. If you are instructor in a course that uses Development Economics, please email me and I will send you what I have. If you are a student in a course I cannot send you this material because I do not want to interfere with your instructor's teaching approach; please request him/her to email me instead.
Selected Lecture Notes for a Graduate Development Course. Updates 2001, 2002, 2007. These notes are preliminary and incomplete and are to be used at your own risk. If you use these notes in teaching a course, proper acknowledgement must be provided.
Introduction to A Reader in Development Economics, edited by Dilip Mookherjee and Debraj Ray, Blackwell (2000).
"What's New In Development Economics?," The American Economist 44, 3--16 (2000).
Here is an informal exposition of some particular interests in inequality and polarization.
Polarization and Conflict
The next two papers deal with questions of conflict, an interest that stems from my earlier work on polarization with Joan Esteban.
"On the Salience of Ethnic Conflict" (with J. Esteban), July 2006, revised November 2007.
"A Model of Ethnic Conflict," (with J. Esteban), September 2005.
Credit and Insurance
"Informal Insurance in Social Networks" (with F. Bloch and G. Genicot), May 2006. Continues in the line of my earlier work with Garance Genicot on limits to insurance created by subcoalitions.
"Bargaining Power and Enforcement in Credit Markets" (with G. Genicot), Journal of Development Economics 79, 398--412 (2006). Another recent paper with Garance for a JDE special issue in honor of Pranab Bardhan (who, among other things, edited the Journal of Development Economics for many years).
Here are two more papers on informal credit. The first one is a nice overview I think. The second paper will never be published, but don't ask me why.
"Credit Rationing in Developing Countries: An Overview of the Theory," Chapter 11 in Readings in the Theory of Economic Development, edited by D. Mookherjee and D. Ray, London: Blackwell, 2000, pages 383--301.
"Information and Enforcement in Informal Credit Markets," (with P. Ghosh), revised November 2001.
Inequality
"Occupational Span and Endogenous Inequality" (with D. Mookherjee), first draft, November 2004, this draft March 2005. Ah, this paper, it will never be completed I fear. It continues to grow and is probably now of interest to only two economists in the world, though of course it shouldn't be that way.
These unpublished notes, Income Distribution and Macroeconomic Behavior, were written in 1990 and may be of interest to those working on the economic implications of inequality. The notes show that inequality must emerge in a two-occupation model (with perfect certainty) and establish the convergence of intertemporal competitive equilibria to a steady state, even in the presence of multiple steady states. An updated version is forthcoming in a special issue of Economic Theory in honor of my old advisor, Mukul Majumdar (no, Mukulda: the "old" applies to "advisor").
"Inequality and Inefficiency in Joint Projects," (with J-M. Baland and O. Dagnelie), April 2003, revised 2006, forthcoming, Economic Journal. Paper studies the interplay of egalitarianism and incentives, an old interest of mine which dates back to this paper with Kaoru Ueda.
"Aspirations, Poverty and Economic Change," in A. Banerjee, R. Bénabou and D. Mookherjee (eds), What Have We Learnt About Poverty, Oxford University Press (2006). This essay is originally based on my comments as discussant on A. Appadurai's paper, World Bank Conference on Culture and Public Action, 2002. Appadurai's paper is published in V. Rao and M. Walton (eds), Culture and Public Action.
Misc
More to come!