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14.73 The Challenge of World Poverty

14.73 The Challenge of World Poverty (Spring 2011, MIT OCW). Instructors: Professor Esther Duflo and Professor Abhijit Banerjee. This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor - or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene? (from ocw.mit.edu)

Lecture 25 - Policies, Politics: Can Evidence Play a Role in the Fight Against Poverty? (cont.)

This lecture discusses the impact of political economics on the world's poor.


Go to the Course Home or watch other lectures:

Lecture 01 - Introduction
Lecture 02 - What is a Poverty Trap?
Lecture 03 - Social Experiments: Why and How?
Lecture 04 - The Nature of Famine
Lecture 05 - Is There a Nutrition-Based Poverty Trap?
Lecture 06 - Nutrition: The Hidden Traps
Lecture 07 - Delivering healthcare: A case study from India
Lecture 08 - Health: Low Hanging Fruit?
Lecture 09 - Education: Setting the Stage
Lecture 10 - Is It Possible to Deliver Quality Education to the Poor-The Pratham-JPAL Partnership
Lecture 11 - Education: The Man Made Trap
Lecture 12 - (Somewhat) Un-Orthodox Findings on the Family
Lecture 13 - How Do Families Decide?
Lecture 14 - Gender Discrimination
Lecture 15 - Risk and Insurance
Lecture 16 - Insurance
Lecture 17 - The (Not So Simple) Economics of Lending to the Poor
Lecture 18 - The (Not So Simple) Economics of Lending to the Poor (cont.)
Lecture 19 - The Promise and Perils of Microfinance
Lecture 20 - Savings
Lecture 21 - Savings 2
Lecture 22 - Entrepreneurs and Workers
Lecture 23 - Entrepreneurs and Workers (cont.)
Lecture 24 - Policies, Politics: Can Evidence Play a Role in the Fight Against Poverty?
Lecture 25 - Policies, Politics: Can Evidence Play a Role in the Fight Against Poverty? (cont.)
Lecture 26 - Five Thoughts in Place of a Sweeping Conclusion