Poverty, Growth Inequality

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This class will explore inequality within and across countries, what poverty means for a country's citizens, and what strategies countries might be able to follow to stimulate economic growth along with why economists believe that is a desirable outcome. Our focus will be on the theoretical, quantitative, and empirical aspects of these questions, with a significant portion of the course devoted to working data to better understand these topics and how they are interrelated. We will discuss and apply methods for measuring poverty and inequality and cover methodological issues related to measuring economic growth and the effectiveness of economic policy reforms. We will also touch on historical approaches to development and explore why some countries have experienced tremendous growth over the past 30 years while others have remained stagnant.