Topics in Macroeconomics, Development and Trade

This is a graduate class that covers selected topics at the intersection of macroeconomics, economic development and trade, for students in the second year of the PhD and above. The leading theme of the class is the determinants of the observed cross-country differences in income per capita and growth rates, with a focus on the long run. We start by reviewing theories where factor markets function perfectly and only aggregates matter. We then move to non-aggregative theories, placing special emphasis on theories of financial frictions. We spend some time studying the stochastic growth model with partially uninsurable idiosyncratic risk.