ECO 301 - Economics of Development

Course Objectives

The course aims to introduce students to the subject of development economics and to develop their understanding of the political economy of the complex problems and policy issues that are faced by emerging market economies of the world.

Course Description

The course will start with an overview of the meaning and measures/indicators of the phenomena of “economic development” as distinct from “economic growth”, and place the issue in a historical context. Following this introduction, we will cover the wide-ranging and diverse spectrum of economic theories and models of development and growth.
In the second half of the course, we shift from theoretical concerns to exploration of a series of applied topics such as structural transformations of developing market economies through industrialization and agricultural development processes, population growth, education, technology, open macroeconomics issues such as exchange rate regimes, capital flows and balance of payments problems, macroeconomic policies and international institutional linkages. The final part of the course will entail presentations and discussions of group projects on particular topics of interest with a focus on Turkey as a case study.