Principal Investigator Esther Duflo
Co-investigators Abhijit Banerjee , Jonathan Gruber , Peter Diamond
Underdevelopment is one of the most profound problems in economics, and it may be the problem with the greatest human impact. At MIT the study of development began during Paul Rosenstein-Rodan's tenure and continued through the work of Richard Eckaus. Today, the two faculty who most directly shape the development economics field are Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Abhijit Banerjee is an applied theorist with a strong commitment to studying problems in development economics. He is currently working on issues involving credit cooperatives, tenancy reforms, and the structure of contracts. Esther Duflo is primarily interested in empirical issues that arise in the study of developing economies, and she ranges widely across various topics. She has recently completed major empirical studies of education reform, farming practices, political structure, public works projects, and financial policy.
Many of the core issues that confront developing economies have close parallels in developed nations, and the set of MIT faculty who have studied economic policy in developing nations is far larger than the group that teaches development economics. Peter Diamond, for example, has carried out research on Social Security reform in Chile and other developing countries. Jonathan Gruber has studied the economic impacts of disability in Indonesia. Joshua Angrist has studied education policy in a number of developing nations.
The Department offers a two-semester course for graduate students in development economics, as well as two popular undergraduate courses on economic development. The courses offer students an opportunity to use tools from both microeconomic and macroeconomic theory to study a range of interesting policy issues in developing nations. It also hosts a joint seminar with Harvard, which attracts faculty interested in development economics from both institutions.
Many past graduates of the MIT Economics Department work at international organizations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, where they help to design and implement economic policies for developing nations. It also hosts a joint seminar with Harvard, which attracts faculty interested in development economics from both institutions.