Discussion readings:

Discussion 1: Agricultural subsidies

“Punch-Ups Over Handouts,” The Economist, March 23, 2005.

Mutume, Gumisai. “Mounting Opposition to Northern Farm Subsidies: African Cotton

Farmers Battling to Survive,” Africa Recovery, May 2003.

Slevin, Peter. “In North Dakota, Farmers Wary of Cuts to Subsidies,” The Washington

Post, April 4, 2005.

Discussion 2: Land reform

“A Thin Red Line: Brazil’s Landless Movement,” The Economist, May 19, 2005.

“If Not for NAFTA, When?” (Survey of Mexico), The Economist, October 26, 2000.

“A Plot of Our Own: Land Reform in Brazil,” The Economist, July 15, 1999.

Johnson, Nancy L. “Tierra y Libertad: Will Tenure Reform Improve Productivity in

Mexico’s Ejido Agriculture,” Economic Development and Cultural Change,

2001, 291-295 (required) 296-309 (optional).

Discussion 3: Child labor

“Kids Need Liquidity, Too,” The Economist, September 14, 2000.

“Banana Skins: The Children of the Plantations,” The Economist, April 25, 2002.

Basu, Kaushik and Pham Hoang Van. “The Economics of Child Labor,” American

Economic Review, June 1998, 412-427.

Discussion 4: Microcredit

“From Tiny Acorns,” The Economist, December 10, 1998.

“Africa’s Women Go to Work,” The Economist, January 11, 2001.

Banerjee, Abhijit, “Inequality and Investment,” mimeo, pp. 2-6.

Discussion 5: Risk, insurance, and agriculture

Townsend, Robert M. “Financial Systems in Northern Thai Villages,” Quarterly Journal

of Economics, November 1995, 1011-1046.

“Drought, Death, and Taxes,” The Economist, September 5, 2002.

Discussion 6: Corruption

“Reasons to be Venal,” The Economist, August 14, 1997.

Reinikka, Ritva and Jakob Svensson. “Local Capture: Evidence from a Central

Government Transfer Program in Uganda,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May

2004, 679-707.

Discussion 7: Cell phones – Technology and development

“Fishermen on the Net,” The Economist, November 8, 2001.

“At the Back of Beyond,” The Economist, October 7, 1999.

Butler, Rhett. “Cell Phones May ‘Help’ Save Africa,” article on mongabay.com, July 11,

2005.

Discussion 8: Development in the U.S. and within Los Angeles

“Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise,” The Economist, May 20, 1999.

“They Can Yet Be Resurrected,” The Economist, January 8, 1998.

Wright, Richard and Mark Ellis. “The Ethnic and Gender Division of Labor Compared

Among Immigrants to Los Angeles,” International Journal of Urban and

Regional Research, September 2000, 583-600.

Discussion 9: 100 million missing women

“Missing Persons,” The Economist, February 22, 2001.

Dubner, Stephen J. and Steven D. Levitt. “The Search for 100 Million Missing Women,”

article on slate.com, May 24, 2005.

Sen, Amartya. “More than 100 Million Women are Missing,” The New York Review of

Books, December 20, 1990.

Discussion 10: Third-world debt, globalization, and poverty

“Grinding the Poor,” The Economist, September 27, 2001.

Clark, Aaron. “Alms for the Poor,” Newsweek International, April 4, 2005.

Easterly, William. The Elusive Quest for Growth. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001),

123-137.