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Inverted pyramid
Topic sentence - general statement - present
Supporting sentences (reason, consequence) - extend/explain+result
Example (most specific) - support/example
1. Remembering:
2. Understanding:
At the second level of the taxonomy, you can enhance your understanding of the material by:
Having discussions with others to help reinforce the ideas and clarify points you are confused about
Writing down questions you might have about the material
Teaching what you have learned to someone else
Summarizing key points in your own words to ensure understanding
3. Applying:
4. Analyzing:
5. Evaluating:
6. Creating:
By systematically progressing through these levels, you can deepen your understanding of the material and develop a more comprehensive and lasting knowledge base, .
• Learn (remember and understand) about theories and concepts of economic development and sustainable development (factual and conceptual)
• Learn (remember and understand) about development policy approaches and policy analysis (factual, conceptual, procedural)
• Relate (understand, analyze) theories and concepts to actual measurement and empirical work (factual, conceptual, procedural)
Below is a concise map of **major development‑policy approaches** that students typically encounter, arranged roughly in the order they emerged. Each entry notes its core idea, hallmark tools, and an emblematic country or episode.
| Approach | Essence & typical instruments | Illustrative cases |
| ------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Balanced‑growth “big‑push”** (1940s‑50s) | Simultaneous public investment across many sectors to overcome demand/supply bottlenecks. | Early post‑independence India five‑year plans. ([rgu.ac.in][1]) |
| **Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI)** | Protect domestic manufacturing behind tariffs/quotas, substitute imports with local production; SOE expansion. | 1950‑80s Latin America, esp. Brazil & Mexico. ([ScienceDirect][2], [FAOHome][3]) |
| **Unbalanced‑growth / linkage strategy** | Target a few “leading” sectors to spark forward & backward linkages—accept short‑run imbalance. | Hirschman’s advocacy; steel & chemicals in S. Korea 1960s. ([rgu.ac.in][1]) |
| **Export‑Oriented Industrialisation (EOI)** | Compete in world markets; use incentives, Fx policy, learning‑by‑exporting; gradual tariff cuts. | Four Asian Tigers; China post‑2001 WTO entry. ([IMF eLibrary][4], [Investopedia][5]) |
| **Washington Consensus / Structural Adjustment** (1980s‑90s) | Liberalise trade & finance, privatise SOEs, fiscal austerity, deregulate; “get prices right”. | IMF & World Bank programmes in Latin America, Sub‑Saharan Africa. ([growthlab.hks.harvard.edu][6], [PIIE][7]) |
| **Good‑governance & institutional reform** | Strengthen rule‑of‑law, property rights, anti‑corruption agencies; “institutions first”. | World Bank Governance Indicators agenda (late 1990s →). ([UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD)][8]) |
| **Human‑development / Capability approach** | Invest in health, education, gender equity; success measured by HDI not GDP. | UNDP Human Development Reports since 1990. |
| **Pro‑poor / Inclusive‑growth strategy** | Ensure growth raises incomes of bottom quintiles—through rural roads, micro‑finance, social protection. | Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net; India’s MGNREGA. |
| **Sustainable / Green‑growth agenda** | Decouple GDP from emissions/resource use; carbon pricing, renewable‑energy feed‑in tariffs, circular‑economy laws. | EU Green Deal; South Korea’s Green Growth plan. |
| **Industrial policy 2.0 (“smart”/learning‑oriented)** | Target export‑ready niches; public‑private councils; performance‑based incentives. | Vietnam electronics/clothing clusters; Rwanda ICT push. ([drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu][9]) |
| **Evidence‑based micro interventions** | Pilot, RCT, or quasi‑experiment → scale only if impact confirmed; “what works” labs. | Cash‑transfer RCTs in Kenya; Pratham’s education trials in India. |
\### Why learn them?
*They form the toolkit you must evaluate or combine when analysing any real‑world policy package.* Understanding their logic, data demands, and typical pitfalls lets practitioners:
1. **Diagnose** a country’s binding constraint (institutions? exports? human capital?).
2. **Design** coherent interventions (e.g., combine cash transfers with agricultural extension rather than copy‑paste ISI tariffs).
3. **Debate** trade‑offs—growth vs. equity, short‑term fiscal space vs. long‑run resilience.
4. **Measure & adjust** using the right indicators (data–theory fit) before scaling up.
That, ultimately, is how theory links to empirical work and real‑life change.
[1]: https://rgu.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/MAECO-505.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "[PDF] Development Economics-II"
[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305750X20304332?utm_source=chatgpt.com "The rise and fall of import substitution - ScienceDirect"
[3]: https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/tcas/projects/dev_paradigms_LiteratureReview2011.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "[PDF] Development paradigms and related policies"
[4]: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2024/086/article-A001-en.xml?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Import Substitution vs. Export-Oriented Industrial Policy in"
[5]: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/011416/exportled-growth-strategies-through-history.asp?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Export-Led Growth Strategies Through History"
[6]: https://growthlab.hks.harvard.edu/files/growthlab/files/serra8.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "[PDF] The Washington Consensus Reconsidered - The Growth Lab"
[7]: https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/publications/papers/williamson0204.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "[PDF] The Washington Consensus as Policy Prescription for Development"
[8]: https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/gdsmdp20151priewe_en.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "[PDF] Seven Strategies for Development in Comparison - UNCTAD"
[9]: https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/industrial-policy-twenty-first-century.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "[PDF] Industrial Policy for the Twenty-First Century - Dani Rodrik"
Cases
Here is a comprehensive list of case studies, projects, interventions, policies, and issues drawn from the sources, framed as practical applications for development economics terms and concepts.
I. Policies and Interventions for Economic Growth and Poverty Alleviation
These examples highlight different approaches to fostering economic growth, from broad national policies to specific firm-level interventions.
II. Addressing Social Challenges with Technology and Innovation
These case studies focus on how technological innovations, especially AI, are being applied to critical development sectors and the lessons learned from past breakthroughs.
III. Data, Measurement, and Statistical Capacity
These cases highlight the importance, challenges, and political economy of collecting and using data in development.
IV. Innovation and Metascience in Development
These cases explore how to foster innovation more effectively, including studying science itself, and the roles of different actors.
V. Institutional Reform and Governance
These cases focus on the quality of institutions, government capacity, and the challenges of corruption.
Not quite — the file contains several other questions that fit Bloom’s Apply level (i.e. you must use a formula, diagram, table, or model in a new situation, not merely recall or explain it).
Below is the consolidated catalogue of all Apply‑type items I could locate:
Table 56
Apply‑level task
Citation
Numeric / formula calculations
1
GDP‑growth & COR “Suppose 2010 GDP = 15 000 USD, K = 40 000 USD… (a) Calculate the COR (α) … (b) Compute annual GDP‑growth for three saving rates … (c) Forecast GDP in 2020.”
2
Harrod‑Domar growth “K = 30, Y = 15, δ = 0.05, s = 0.3. What is the growth rate of the economy?”
3
TFP decomposition “Given K, L and Y for two decades, (i) compute TFP growth, (ii) %‑contribution of TFP, (iii) %‑contribution of capital.”
4
Exact vs. log‑approximate growth “GDP per‑capita 1500 → 1650 → 1800: (a) exact growth, (b) compare to log approximation.”
5
ICOR (intro chapter) “Real GNP Turkey rises from L 206.1 bn to L 214.7 bn; investment = L 43 bn. Compute the ICOR.”
(present in the text block you supplied, though not in the PDF scan)
Model‑based problem‑solving / diagramming
6
Solow steady state “δ = 0.05, g = 0.03, n = 0.02, s = 0.2; f(ke)=ke^0.5. (a) ke*, ce* … (d) growth rates of K, k, Y, y.”
7
Alternative Solow‑Cobb‑Douglas exercise “δ = 0.06, g = 0.08, n = 0.02, s = 0.2; f(ke)=10 (ke)^0.2. Find ke*, ce*, effects of raising s to 0.3, and g_c.”
8
Cobb‑Douglas mechanics “A = 1, K = 25, L = 36, α = β = 0.5. (a) output level; (b) prove diminishing marginal products; (c) prove CRS iff β = 1−α.”
Graph‑drawing / visual application
9
Lorenz‑curve & Gini “Three‑person (then four‑person) Lilliput economy: draw Lorenz curves, compute Gini, comment on inequality.”
10
Network‑externality game “Kenya internet‑access scheme: (a) draw cost & benefit curves vs n; (b) locate two equilibria and critical n*; (c) suggest policies.”
Table / regression interpretation that requires computations
11
Aid–growth regressions “Using Tables 4 & 6 (Burnside‑Dollar) discuss link between aid, policy, growth and draw policy implications.”
12
Gender‑education growth panel “From the regression table: (a) test convergence; (b) quantify population‑growth impact; (c) quantify gender‑inequality impact.”
There are no rows in this table
If you meet another question with verbs such as calculate, graph, forecast, draw, simulate, solve etc., treat it as Apply unless it explicitly asks you to critique or compare (which would move it into Analyze/Evaluate).
So, while the earlier shortlist covered the most obvious items, the PDF contains a dozen distinct Apply‑level tasks spanning growth accounting, Solow/Harrod models, welfare‑diagram drawing, externality games, and evidence‑table interpretation.
Questions in the exam file that sit at the “Apply” level (use / calculate / draw / graph / solve)
Table 55
Topic block
Question excerpt (apply‑verb shown in bold)
Why it is “Apply”
Source
Poverty & inequality
“Draw the Lorenz curve … calculate the Gini‑coefficient.”
Requires using the Lorenz‑curve procedure on new numbers.
“Now… one migrant earns 500 … Draw the new Lorenz curve …”
Transfers same tool to a changed data set.
Growth‑rates
“GDP per capita was 1500, 1650, 1800 … Calculate the exact growth rate … Compare with log‑approximation.”
Applies growth‑rate formulas to raw figures.
Cobb‑Douglas
“A=1, K=25, L=36 … evaluate total production. How much will production change if K increases four‑fold?”
Plug parameters into production function to obtain outputs.
“Show that Cobb‑Douglas has diminishing marginal products if α, β < 1.”
Uses rule ∂F/∂K etc. to demonstrate property.
Solow model numericals
“δ = 0.06, g = 0.08 … What is steady‑state kₑ? … How will consumption change if s rises to 0.3?”
Requires applying Solow equations to compute steady values.
Harrod‑Domar
“K=30, Y=15, δ=0.05, s=0.3 – What will the growth rate be?”
Direct use of g = s/ICOR formula.
TFP exercise
“K₀=2, K₁=2.6; L₀=1, L₁=1.1; Y₀=1, Y₁=1.5 – Calculate TFP growth … percentage contributions.”
Apply growth‑accounting identities.
Network‑effect game
“Kenya internet scheme: Graph cost & benefit vs n … Describe equilibria algebraically.”
Uses game‑theory graphing and critical‑mass formula on a new scenario.
There are no rows in this table
These items demand that students use learned formulas, graphs, or procedures in a fresh numerical or graphical situation—the defining feature of the Apply level in Bloom’s hierarchy.
– Judging whether a Kenya land‑title pilot can scale to Ethiopia.
– Weighing success stories of micro‑hydro in Nepal before funding in Laos.
Broader issues that benefit from generalisation:
– Poverty‑trap dynamics (credit constraints, nutrition)
– Climate‑change adaptation choices
– Natural‑resource governance (avoiding Dutch disease)
– Gender gaps in labour markets
Poverty and inequality: Explaining why some countries are rich and others poor, understanding the characteristics of high-poverty groups, and designing anti-poverty programs
Population dynamics: Analyzing population growth and its relationship with economic growth
.
• Rapid urbanization and expansion of megacities
.
• Persistent public health challenges: Such as HIV/AIDS prevention
, immunization, and de-worming school children
.
• Environmental decay and sustainable development: Including questions on negative externalities, property rights, public goods, and "decoupling economic growth from the environment"
.
• Rural stagnation and agricultural issues: Like fertilizer use
or the impact of real exchange rate depreciation on agriculture
.
• Government failure and market failure: Understanding conditions under which markets fail and how appropriate policies can fix inefficiencies
. This includes issues like imperfect markets and their "contagious" nature
.
• Inadequacies of financial markets: Such as access to credit for the poor, and the development of stock markets
.
• International trade and instability: Issues like the effects of trade on inequality
, the balance of trade, and the Dutch disease
.
• Debt and financial crises: Analyzing basic-transfer mechanisms, capital flight, and the re-emergence of debt crises
.
• Direct foreign investment (FDI): Its implications, including technology transfer and impacts on local industries
.
• Foreign aid and its effectiveness: Including issues of fungibility and conditionality
.
• Violent conflict and geopolitical strategy
.
• Labor markets in dual economies and unemployment
.
• Organizational challenges: Such as silo mentality, lack of cooperation, and internal coordination failures in complex systems like intelligence agencies or large corporations
.
• Policy implementation failures: When "policymakers had the wrong model of the world in mind"
.
• "Wicked problems": Complex problems where problem-system and solution-system exist side-by-side, often defying simple solutions
• Infrastructure projects: Access roads, airports, government buildings, health facilities [previous conversation].
• Millennium Villages Project
.
• School reform initiatives: Like AGEMAD in Madagascar
or programs giving parents' school committees money to hire extra teachers in Kenya
.
• De-worming school children in rural Kenya
.
• Providing textbooks to raise test scores in Kenya
.
• Improving management practices in large firms in India
.
• Argentina’s workfare program Trabajar
.
• Mexico's Progresa program: A social cash transfer program
.
• Social Cash Transfer (SCT) programs in sub-Saharan Africa
.
• Microfinance interventions: Such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh
.
• International aid allocation frameworks: Like the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) and its use of CPIA scores
.
• Specific policies aimed at industrialization: Like promoting basic/heavy industries
or a government industrialization strategy centered on absorbing technology from abroad
.
• Chinese Eximbank's concessional loans: Supporting direct investment for natural resource acquisition [previous conversation].
• Developing an export sector specialized in electronic components
.
• Nutritional programs: Large-scale interventions to grow more nutritious crops or provide nutritional supplements
.
• ComputeFast PC company case study: A business scenario involving sales slumps, customer service, and market expansion
.
• US Intelligence Community and USAF C2 Constellation: Examples of complex organizational systems needing improved information sharing, integration, and coordination
.
• Railtrack plc (UK): A real-world example of managing a complex rail passenger system with diverse stakeholders
.
• Illegal immigration into the United States and Hurricane Katrina disaster response/preparedness: Examples for applying systems thinking to societal problems
1. Poverty Measurement and Interpretation: Germany's "Poverty Report" vs. Absolute Poverty
2. Development vs. Economic Growth: The Cases of Mr. Kabamba and Mr. Banks
3. The Role of Institutions: North vs. South Korea
4. Colonial Legacies and Institutional Pathways: Ghana vs. Côte d’Ivoire
5. Informal Institutions and Market Failures: "Trader Idiosyncrasy" in Rural India
6. The Natural Resource Curse: The Dutch Disease in the Netherlands
7. Natural Resources and Political Outcomes: Oil Discoveries and Democracy. Tsui (2010) studied the relationship between oil discoveries (treated as a natural experiment) and democracy
8. Evaluating Development Interventions: USAID and Mortality. A retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis (Cavalcanti et al., 2024)
9. The Challenges of Aid Effectiveness: The Millennium Villages Project
10. Migration Dynamics: India's Emigration Trends (Cross-Sectional vs. Over Time)
Drawing on the provided sources and our conversation, here are examples of development policies, development-related problems, forecasting methods, interventions, and development projects:
1. Development Policies
These are broad strategies, regulations, or courses of action adopted by governments or organisations to promote economic and human development
.
• Import-substitution industrialisation policies: These were supported by the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis in many countries since the 1960s, aiming to shield infant industries
. However, these policies, when maintained for many years, went against comparative advantage, with countries following more trade-oriented models faring much better
.
• Welfare and redistribution programs: Many countries started these in the 1970s, but they proved costly and often came at the expense of economic growth in the 1980s
.
• Structural adjustment programs: Required by the IMF (and endorsed by the World Bank, forming the "Washington Consensus") in the early 1980s as a condition for debt restructuring. These involved stopping import-substitution industrialisation policies and many welfare programs, relying instead on market forces
. They were criticised for not leading to desirable developments
.
• Policies to promote "pro-poor growth": This involves promoting growth in sectors from which many of the poor derive their income, such as agriculture or labour-intensive industries, to ensure that the additional income is distributed more equitably
.
• Proper resource pricing: Government pricing policies, potentially through subsidies, can influence resource use. Properly pricing products can prevent exacerbating resource shortages and discourage unsustainable production methods
.
• Community involvement: Engaging communities in sustainability programs can boost their contribution
. Examples include governments supporting local residents in forested areas to act as guardians of the resource, which can negate illegal logging
.
• Clearer property rights and resource ownership: Legalisation of tenure and property rights can increase investment in households and agriculture, as insecure property rights might discourage sustainable investment
.
• Improved economic alternatives for the poor: Providing alternative rural employment opportunities can prevent practices like rainforest resettlements and slash-and-burn agriculture, indirectly protecting the environment
.
• Improved economic status of women: Boosting gender equality can lead to more sustainable economic practices, as women are often involved in resource-rich tasks, and female education can reduce family size
.
• Industrial emissions abatement policies: These are policies aimed at limiting environmental damage, such as taxing emissions, though their implementation may require international consideration to avoid reducing competition
.
• Proactive stance toward adapting to climate change: This includes policies like early warning systems, promoting reforestation, restoring natural ecosystems, and improving micro-insurance programs, and constructing storm shelters, flood barriers, and protected roads and bridges
.
• Trade policies: Reducing barriers and subsidies (by industrialised countries) can help developing countries
. However, there's a concern that free trade agreements with Global South countries might induce exploitation, suggesting the need for specific definitions of what is not in favour of sustainable development
.
• Debt relief and debt for nature swaps: These open up funding for local investments
. Debt for nature swaps involve conditional debt relief, where a donor country cancels debt if the recipient invests the money into environmental preservation
.
• Development assistance: High-income countries can assist with adaptation to climate change
.
• Emissions controls (including greenhouse gases): A policy for high-income countries to protect the global environment
.
• Research and Development on green technology and pollution control: High-income countries can invest in this
.
• Transfer of technology to developing countries: High-income countries can facilitate this
.
• Restrictions on unsustainable production: Another policy for high-income countries to protect the global environment
.
• Policies related to fertility and population growth: Policy in the past considered providing free or better access to contraceptives
, but experimental evidence suggests their effect on fertility is small unless it aligns with desired fertility
.
• Transparency in natural resource management: This is crucial for efficient negotiation, accountability, and good governance in resource-rich countries
.
• Sovereign wealth funds: These funds, if well-managed, can save natural resource revenues for future generations and prevent Dutch Disease if assets are held outside the monetary system
.
• Direct dividends: Distributing natural resource revenues directly to the population rather than solely keeping them as government revenue
.
2. Development-Related Problems
These are significant challenges or obstacles that hinder economic and human development.
• Poverty and Inequality:
◦ Poverty: Defined as "lack of the resources required to satisfy basic needs" (food, shelter, clothing, health)
. Distinctions exist between relative poverty (e.g., Germany's "Poverty Report" indicating 20% poor) and absolute poverty (used for low-income countries) [Conversation History]. Around 10% of the global population still lives in extreme poverty. Progress in poverty reduction has slowed since 2015, with setbacks from COVID-19, climate change, conflicts, and refugee issues
.
◦ Income Poverty: While broader than just income, income is the most comprehensive single indicator in quantitative poverty assessments
.
◦ Income Inequality: Occurs at both global and within-country levels
. Growth can reduce poverty, but the effect depends on how additional income is distributed; if only the rich benefit, inequality rises and poverty remains unaffected
.
• Weak/Bad Institutions: Institutions are the rules and norms guiding actions
. Bad institutions can lead to:
◦ Corruption: An indicator of weak institutions, often associated with lower economic growth
. The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI) measures perceived levels of public sector corruption, relying on expert and business perceptions
.
◦ Insecure Property Rights: When not secure, people may fight over land, lack incentive to invest, or pollute/destroy others' property
.
◦ Lack of Fair and Efficient Judiciary: Hinders adherence to laws and contracts
.
◦ Caste System in India: Still contributes to discrimination
.
◦ Informal Institutions: Can emerge in response to market failures or non-existent formal institutions, sometimes leading to unexpected distributional outcomes, such as "trader idiosyncrasy" in rural India where cotton prices varied due to reciprocity and market interlocking with access to subsidised goods
.
• Colonial Legacies: Historical colonial patterns and different legal systems (e.g., British Common Law vs. French Civil Law) can have long-term impacts on post-colonial development, as seen in the contrasting paths of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire
. These legacies can perpetuate unequal power dynamics and hinder progress, leading to "neo-colonialism" where natural resources are extracted from periphery countries and manufactured goods are sold back to them
.
• Natural Resource Curse ("Paradox of Plenty"): The phenomenon where countries rich in natural resources tend to have lower economic growth and worse development outcomes than those with fewer resources
.
◦ Dutch Disease: A sudden windfall from natural resource extraction (like natural gas in the Netherlands in 1959) can lead to currency appreciation, making other exports uncompetitive and causing the decline of manufacturing and agriculture
. This is problematic as manufacturing is seen as a key source of long-term growth and employment
.
◦ Volatility: Natural resource revenues are volatile due to fluctuations in extraction rates, payment timings, and commodity prices, hampering long-term planning and leading to liquidity/credit constraints
.
◦ Myopic Behaviour: Short-sightedness among actors, either "sloth" (neglecting diversification due to guaranteed resource income) or "exuberance" (excessive spending/borrowing due to perceived endless income, leading to "white elephant" projects and corruption)
.
◦ State Unaccountability: Governments deriving sufficient revenue from resources may not tax populations, reducing public demand for accountability. They can also use patronage (bribing elites) or repression (increased military spending) to prevent opposition and group formation, sustaining authoritarian regimes
.
◦ Rent-Seeking: Re-allocation of effort and resources towards non-productive activities like lobbying and bribery, breeding corruption and distorting economic efficiency and social equity
.
◦ Conflict: Natural resources can fuel conflict (e.g., diamond mines and conflict in Africa) through competition for resource control, funding warring factions, and grievances arising from inequality and environmental damage
.
◦ Extractive Multinationals: Governments face challenges dealing with these corporations due to limited competition, asymmetric information, agency problems, and lack of transparency
.
◦ Green Colonialism: Commodification and privatisation of natural resources benefiting a few at the expense of local communities and leading to environmental degradation
.
◦ Crowding out of Human Capital: Countries confident in natural resources may neglect human resource development (education) because the resource sector doesn't require a highly educated workforce, thereby reducing willingness to invest in education
.
• Environmental Degradation and Climate Change:
◦ Environmental Kuznets Curve critiques: While theorising an initial increase then decrease in environmental degradation with income, this is based on averages, doesn't imply causality, and can suffer from reverse causality (pollution slowing growth) or omitted variable bias (bad institutions causing both high pollution and low income)
.
◦ Planetary Boundaries: Even constant resource use and pollution conflict with several planetary boundaries (climate stability, biodiversity, land, water)
.
◦ Impacts on LMICs: The poorest developing countries are hit earliest and hardest by climate change, despite contributing little to the problem, leading to "inequality in capacity to adapt"
.
◦ Specific Environmental Effects of Global Warming: Irregular precipitation, heavy rainfall, floods, tropical cyclones, severe storms, drought, wildfires, and mass extinction
.
◦ Socioeconomic Effects of Climate Change: Income loss and inequality (disproportionately affecting poorer regions and ethnic/racial minorities)
, food insecurity (sharp declines in agricultural yield, worsening chronic and acute malnutrition), population displacement (loss of assets, increasing refugees, conflict), and health impacts (heat stress, exacerbating pre-existing conditions, reducing labour capacity, and aggravating pathogenic diseases)
.
• Population Growth:
◦ "Population Tax": Percentage loss in GDP growth due to population growth
.
◦ Environmental Degradation: More people can lead to increased environmental degradation and resource use
.
◦ Congestion Externalities: Problems like slums and traffic jams due to high population density
.
◦ Difficulties in Providing Public Goods: Challenges in providing health, education, and infrastructure for rapidly growing populations
.
◦ "Demographic Bomb": A "youth bulge" can become a "demographic bomb" if a large cohort of young people cannot find employment or satisfactory income opportunities
.
◦ Higher Birth Rates in LMICs: LMICs tend to have higher birth rates compared to pre-industrial Western Europe, and a more rapid decline in death rates due to imported modern medical technologies, leading to significant natural population boosts
.
• Migration-Related Problems:
◦ "Migration Hump": The theory that emigration rises with economic development until a threshold (± upper-middle income level), then falls
. Policy trade-offs between supporting development and reducing immigration pressures are implied, but the assumption that development boosts migration is challenged by longitudinal data (e.g., India)
.
◦ Push Factors: Reasons for people to leave their country of origin, such as war, conflict, or lack of economic opportunities
.
◦ Brain Drain: The "internal brain-drain" where migrants' education is paid by agriculture but they benefit industry
.
◦ Challenges for Host Countries: Potential short-term negative effects for host populations, increased competition for resources, cultural differences, and social tensions
.
• Challenges in Aid Effectiveness:
◦ Methodological Issues in Impact Evaluation:
▪ Omitted Variable Bias: Occurs when an unobserved factor influences both the intervention (X) and the outcome (Y), leading to spurious correlation (e.g., temperature affecting both ice cream sales and crime rates; ability affecting both education and earnings; bad institutions affecting both pollution and income)
.
▪ Selection Bias: Arises when the selection of subjects into a study or intervention is non-random and correlated with the outcome variable (e.g., comparing private vs. public school attendees; selection into migration programs)
.
▪ Reverse Causality: When the causality runs from Y to X, rather than X to Y, making it difficult to determine the true causal direction (e.g., low growth causing debt, higher income enabling better nutrition, inequality affecting growth vs. growth affecting inequality)
.
◦ Drawbacks of RCTs (Randomised Control Trials):
▪ External Validity: Lab settings often use specific selections of people (e.g., college students) and involve fictitious decisions, raising questions about whether findings apply to real-life situations
.
▪ Hawthorne Effect: Subjects change their behaviour because they know they are being studied
.
▪ John Henry Effect (compensatory rivalry): Control group subjects try to "overcome" their disadvantage, no longer acting as a true counterfactual
.
▪ Ethical Issues: Control groups not receiving treatment, randomising treatment rather than targeting, and the nature of the treatment itself can raise ethical concerns
.
▪ Practical Issues: Feasibility (RCTs are expensive and complex), spill-over effects (contamination of control groups if they interact with treatment groups), and attrition (participants dropping out)
.
▪ Limited Scope: RCTs are often suitable for small-scale questions (e.g., bed nets reducing malaria, deworming increasing education) but less relevant for understanding economy-wide development questions (e.g., impact of good institutions, macroeconomic policies, urbanisation)
. Critics argue that over-reliance on RCTs lowers ambitions in development research
.
◦ Aid Misdirection and Ineffectiveness:
▪ Wasted Aid: A large portion of foreign aid is argued to be wasted, increasing unproductive public consumption due to poor institutional development, corruption, inefficiencies, and bureaucratic failures in recipient countries
.
▪ Political and Strategic Motivations: Aid allocation is often dictated more by political and strategic considerations (colonial past, political alliances, geopolitical interests) than by economic needs or policy performance of recipients
.
▪ Undermining Local Markets/Producers: Aid can flood markets with free goods (e.g., wheat), harming local producers and creating economic stagnation
.
▪ Promoting Dependency: Aid can undermine institutions, discourage local innovations, and create long-term dependency, with countries reliant on aid less likely to reform institutions or generate local solutions
.
▪ Volatility and Unpredictability: Fluctuating aid flows disrupt government planning
.
▪ Corruption and Mismanagement: Aid can be a "fuel for corruption" for elites, allowing them to reign without citizen accountability, similar to the natural resource curse
. It can also fund warring factions in conflicts
.
▪ "Top-down" approach: When aid interventions are designed by external organisations without fully accounting for local realities and needs, leading to ineffective or wasteful projects
.
▪ Short-term vs. Long-term: Most aid might be short-term, raising questions about its effectiveness for long-term development unless it specifically invests in human capital and institutions
.
▪ Dutch Disease from Aid Inflows: Large aid inflows can raise the value of local currency, making exports less competitive and damaging local industries
.
3. Forecasting
Forecasting involves using models and data to predict future development trends or the impacts of interventions.
• USAID Impact Evaluation and Forecasting: A study evaluated the impact of USAID interventions over two decades and forecasted the future effect of its defunding on mortality up to 2030
.
• Methodology: This involved integrating a retrospective impact evaluation with validated dynamic microsimulation models
. Microsimulation is considered one of the most accurate forecasting methods because it can incorporate country-specific characteristics and their associated outcome probabilities. These models were built using extrapolations and modelling of country-level independent variables from retrospective datasets, preserving the original variable distributions and country-specific trends
.
• Predictions: The forecasting models predicted that current steep USAID funding cuts could result in over 14 million additional all-age deaths and over 4.5 million additional under-five deaths by 2030
. These predictions aim to compare two parallel scenarios (with vs. without defunding) rather than exact mortality rates, considering that external factors like economic changes, climate events, or conflict might influence future mortality
.
4. Interventions
These are specific actions, programmes, or strategies designed to address development problems or achieve development goals.
• Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs: Governments can condition social benefits to children's regular school attendance
. These programs have demonstrated important effects on reducing adult female mortality (by 20%) and child mortality (by 8% in LMICs, with higher reductions in specific contexts like Brazil (18%) and Latin America (24%))
.
• Free school feeding programs: Can be introduced by governments to promote human development
.
• Strict labour standards, banning child labour: Government policies to promote education
.
• Building additional schools: Especially in rural areas, to make education more accessible
.
• Improving teaching quality: A direct intervention in education
.
• HIV testing programs: Such as free door-to-door HIV tests, sometimes with small monetary incentives to encourage learning results
. Research in Malawi found these barriers were easily overcome, but knowledge of positive HIV diagnosis only modestly increased protective behaviour, suggesting that testing alone may not be the most cost-effective prevention strategy without information campaigns
.
• Deworming programs: Shown to increase children's schooling years
.
• Bed nets distribution: Effective in decreasing diseases, especially malaria, and can even increase future demand for bed nets if accompanied by awareness campaigns
.
• Provision of information: Can be an intervention (e.g., alongside HIV testing, or to accompany bed net distribution)
.
• Insurance programs: Can incentivise parents not to remove children from school during economic hardship
.
• "Low-hanging fruits": Simple, cheap measures with big impacts, such as chlorine to prevent diarrhoea, rehydration packages for children with diarrhoea, or process optimisation for businesses
.
• Agricultural R&D, water management, and infrastructure investments: Can mitigate negative effects of climate change on food security and hunger
.
• Climate-smart agriculture: A set of interventions aimed at improving farmer productivity, making farms more resilient to climate impacts, and curbing greenhouse gas emissions
. Examples include crop, soil, pest, and disease management, shade trees, and water conservation
.
• Circular production and consumption systems: Focus on using arable land primarily for food, minimising waste, and recycling nutrients, aiming for significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and land use
.
5. Development Projects
These are specific, often time-bound, initiatives with defined objectives aimed at achieving development outcomes.
• Millennium Villages Project: A project spearheaded by Jeffrey Sachs involving large infusions of aid into selected African villages (education, healthcare, infrastructure) to demonstrate the "big push" theory
. Critics noted the lack of control villages and potential selection bias
.
• USAID-funded activities: These include support for health care, nutrition, development, humanitarian relief, education, and other sectors
. Specific examples include:
◦ Support for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), which has immunised millions of children
.
◦ The President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), which has helped save millions of lives and prevented billions of malaria cases
.
◦ The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which involves significant investment in the global HIV/AIDS response
.
◦ Interventions in poverty alleviation, education, and water and sanitation
.
• Japan's infrastructure aid in Southeast Asia: An example of tied aid used to support Japanese contractors and secure influence
.
• China's Belt and Road Initiative: Mentioned as a mostly tied aid project that benefits Chinese companies
.
• "Mayors in Action" program (El Salvador): A U.S. aid program that helped local communities by providing infrastructure and requiring local workforce participation, which reportedly deterred terrorist recruitment
.
• Road network in Somalia: A large aid project that was wasteful because it was built on land used only by nomadic communities, and thus went unused, highlighting the problem of top-down approaches
.
• French beans and baby corn subsidisation in Kenya: An aid-supported project for export to Europe that initially succeeded but failed in the second year due to high food safety standards disappearing, illustrating dependency issues
.
• Ouarzazate solar plant, Morocco: An example of a "green colonialism" project where the Moroccan government and people face the costs of a failing project that also drains a nearby dam
.
Understanding these various policies, problems, forecasts, interventions, and projects is like learning the different parts of an engine: you see how each component (policies, interventions) is designed to address a particular issue (problems), how we predict their performance (forecasting), and specific examples of their implementation (projects), allowing for a comprehensive view of how development efforts are conceived and executed, and where they often encounter challenges.
Region/Country development what does it mean? How we can measure it?
Questions & Answers
Tasks, case studies, problems, examples, practical scenarios (applying learned concepts to real-world examples)
What knowledge, information i need to solve this, or apply info correctly to real-life example?
Break them down to parts, identify relationships, distinguish different ideas (how they differ/similar), note reasons, and consequences/impacts
Analyze/Evaluate. See how everything works
Final Conclusion/Solution/Well supported opinion
Study the traditional narrative that land reform in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, involving the redistribution of land from landlords to peasants, directly led (or not, or more nuanced?) to increased agricultural productivity and industrialisation, pulling nearly 1 billion people out of poverty.
— Compare evidence from lectures on Taiwan mostly, but also South Korea, Japan, China and one that come from the article and other sources → and understand more nuanced picture of those land reforms and poltical context and other stuff in explaining their success
— What is the subject of the evaluation? The effect of Taiwan’s Phase III land redistribution (1953‑63) on (a) agricultural productivity and (b) structural transformation & poverty reduction.
— The goal of the evaluation is general implications/learnings from East Asian development policies (Taiwan) to other economies
— What is the evaluation you need to perform?aka What understanding or knowledge to be gained from an evaluation? — the truth, the strength of evidence and casual/correlation relationships between reform and the agro productivity and poverty reduction, the mechanisms, the strengths and weaknesses of the effect of Taiwan land reform?
— What do you need to know to resolve the major uncertainty? List the things you need to know about the situation.
→ what is relationships (causal/correlation) in terms of dev economics and in general?
→ what is Transferability variables?
→ what is Counterfactual and Counterfactual trend?
→ what was the state before reform in Taiwan? — all the indices, and what they measure in terms of economic and human and sustainable development and ineuqlity and poverty + definitions of economic development, human development, sustainable development, inequality, poverty etc. → also the geopolitical state and it’s effect on economy
→ what are land reforms and all around it?
→ what was after reforms, or in general waht was the growth of the Taiwan, and all about economical growth and it’s indices/measurements, inequality and growth etc. etc. (Equity lens • Who gained/ lost assets?
• What happened to Gini within rural areas vs. national?)
→ what other things that might affected Taiwan and other East Asian countries development? and their definitions etc.
→ what is the evidence from Kim&Wang paper IVs/DiD, what is IVs/DiD etc.? Weakeness and stengths of their methods?
→ Comparable cases • What was different in South‑Vietnam land structure, state capacity, Cold‑War aid? • Korea/Japan: did they pair land reform with fertiliser credit?
→ Transferability variables • Land‑labour ratio, bureaucratic quality, export‑market access, political stability for any target country you will discuss. → I don’t undersand yes what is that
→ • Any Hawthorne, John‑Henry, or spill‑over effects in Kim & Wang’s data? • Attrition in household surveys? - What is that?
— What questions will help you make the evaluation? → criteria
— What concepts and frameworks might help answer your questions?
Break a concept into parts; compare, classify, find patterns.
• Strengths & Weaknesses
• Pros / Cons
• Challenges
• Contradictions, Counter‑arguments, Alternative perspectives / debates
Judge the value or credibility of ideas using criteria.
• Weighting evidence for or against a claim
• Assessing potentials (feasibility, risk)
There are no rows in this table
Goal:
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