AØKK08198U Advanced Development Economics: Applied Macroeconomic and Policy Analysis

The overall aim of the course is to enable students to undertake applied macroeconomic and economic policy analysis in low and middle income country contexts.

Having successfully taken this course, students will be able to:

• analyse national accounts and other macroeconomic indicators, thereby being able to provide a coherent understanding of the structure of a given economy;
• understand the functioning, strengths and weaknesses of some of the main theoretical frameworks (“workhorse policy models”) employed by applied economists in developing countries;
• explain the principal monetary and exchange rate management challenges facing policy-makers in small open developing economies;
• understand the theoretical and practical issues involved in the macroeconomic management of potentially volatile external flows, such as those arising from commodity exports;
• coherently and critically discuss what economic theory and evidence say about “whether”, “how” and “when” to pursue different structural economic policies, including industrial policy, financial and trade liberalization, labour market and public sector reforms;
• explain insights from the political economy literature regarding the conditions under which macroeconomic management and policy reforms may be more or less successful;
• appreciate the distinctions between internal (domestic) and external (global/regional) influences on economic development, as well as be aware of emerging global developments such as the increasing influence of China in Africa; and
• provide examples from the empirical literature, including country cases studies, that shed light on the range of topics covered in the course.