Development Policy OpenCourseWare: MIT's Free Bachelor Level Economics Class on Human Development

Published Feb 05, 2009

RSS Feed

How do people living in impoverished nations make household decisions? This question underlies the content of 'Foundations of Development Policy,' a free online course offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through its OpenCourseWare program. The course's examination of the challenges and choices faced by citizens of developing economies may be useful for students pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Economics.

Foundations of Development Policy: Course Specifics

Degree Level Free Audio Video Downloads
Undergraduate Yes No No Yes

Lectures/Notes Study Materials Tests/Quizzes
Yes Yes Yes

Foundations of Development Policy: Course Description

'Foundations of Development Policy' addresses decision-making in impoverished households as it applies to issues such as nutrition and health, education, family matters, gender equality and risk-taking. The course content utilizes concrete empirical examples, requiring students to have a background in statistics; several statistics courses are also available through MIT's OpenCourseWare. Through the lectures and problem sets for 'Foundations of Development Policy,' students learn to use statistical tools to model the correlation between nutrition and productivity, for example. The course also analyzes the degree to which governments and international organizations can use policy to improve the well being of citizens living in developing countries. Previous policies tried in such regions and the successes and failures of the attempts are considered. This lecture course was taught by Professor Esther Duflo and Professor Abhijit Banerjee as part of the Bachelor of Science in Economics program on the MIT campus. STATA software is required to access some of the statistics materials included in this online course.

Lecture notes, problem set assignments, exams, study tools and an extensive reading list are all available online for this OpenCourseWare. If you'd like to take this course, visit the development policy course page.

Featured School Choices: