Economic Growth and Development

2020/2021

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

3

ECTS credits

Delivered by:

Department of Applied Economics

Type:

Elective course

When:

3 year, 3 module

Instructor

Besstremyannaya, Galina

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The course outlines major economic issues pertaining to incentivizing growth and fostering various structural changes of the economy. Along with examining common economic problems of the low and middle-income countries, the course will focus on the current economic concerns of the developed countries: decreasing inequality across individuals and companies, developing the technology economy, promoting energy efficiency and the use of environmentally friendly technologies, the positive and negative effects of the cultural factors in political economy and corporate governance, and retransformation of economic systems. The course will draw upon the innovative experience of the US and Japan, and will examine economic changes in the BRICS countries, with an emphasis on the technology and energy policy in Russia.

Learning Objectives

• The purpose of the course is to focus on the key issues related to fostering economic growth. The students will learn the recent approaches to modeling economic growth and technological change, the methods of applied economic analysis of the policy changes in various countries, the examples of policy interventions and the determinants of their success, the causes and consequences of poverty and inequality, the adverse effects of growth on consumer welfare owing to environmental pollution. A special attention will be given to the development of the research and analytical skills: a critical review of the existing literature, the understanding of theoretical and empirical techniques, work with empirical data in order to analyze econometric specifications coming from the theoretical models.

Course Contents

• Wealth of nations and quality ladder
  Major sources of economic growth, productivity and technological change in various countries.
• Heteregeneity in economic growth
  Does initial level of per capita GDP matter? Economic justification for focusing on the developed and developing economies in the analysis.
• Management and total factor productivity
  Comparative analysis of managerial practices and growth in the US, EU and company growth across the world
• Why attend schools and universities
  Comparative assessment of the investment in human capital as measured by returns to education in the US, EU, Russia.
• Estimating time profiles of technological change and returns to education using the macro and micro data
• Revising the hypothesis about exogenous growth and convergence of countries to similar economic standards
  A note on endogenous growth through innovation.
• Washington consensus, growth and inflation
• Empirical evaluation of the country’s growth and its time profile
• Simon Kuznets and two curves
  1) income inequality and economic growth, 2) pollution and economic growth. Revisiting inequality and growth
• Russian economy
  Contrasting approaches for measuring labor productivity and technological change
• Russian economy, oil and natural resources
  Finding the symptoms of the Dutch disease
• Flying-geeze approach
  Trade, foreign investment and catch-up growth through improvement in technologies. Evidence from Japan and the BRICS countries
• Silicon valleys in the US and across the world

Assessment Elements

• Final essay and its presentation
  Late work (mid-term essay and final essay) is discounted at 50%.
• Mid-term essay
  Late work (mid-term essay and final essay) is discounted at 50%.
• Class/sections participation
• Final test
  an open book 1 hour 20 minute test

Interim Assessment

• Interim assessment (3 module)
  0.2 * Class/sections participation + 0.4 * Final essay and its presentation + 0.3 * Final test + 0.1 * Mid-term essay

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• Empirical development economics, Soderbom, M., 2015

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• Development economics, Ray, D., 1998