Why Are So Many Countries Poor, Volatile, and Unequal?

Harvard HKS

This course explores the causes and consequences of three salient and interrelated characteristics of developing countries, namely poverty, volatility, and inequality, and it links them to current themes in development policy. The course will characterize the relationships between these three problems and a varied class of proximate and deeper determinants of economic development, including national saving, human capital accumulation, international trade, technology diffusion, demography,…