Development Economics
Fall Semester 2026
📑 The course in brief
Focus:
- Discuss the concept of ‘development’ from an economic perspective
- Learn about different notions of development and their policy implications
- Understand how ‘development’ can be conceptualized, measured, and explained
How:
- The course is lecture-based, with interactive elements
Prerequisites:
- Successful completion of the Economics I and II modules is strongly recommended.
- You also benefit from having completed the course “Applied Data Science”.
🎯 Learning Objectives
Expertise:
- Define and critically evaluate the most important concepts of (sustainable) economic development and commonly used development indicators
- Critically question and assess different approaches to defining and measuring development
- Evaluate policy measures in terms of their expected impact on economic development and identify their underlying theoretical foundations
Methodological Competence:
- Independently collect development data from publicly available sources and use it to analyze determinants and implications of economic development
- Identify and evaluate the theories underlying development programs and policies
- Apply both empirical and theoretical methods from development economics to analyze development-related problems and critically assess them
Social and Personal Skills:
- Critically question common notions of ‘development’ and articulate and justify your own ideas about appropriate definitions and measurements of economic development
- Describe current debates on development policy and take well-founded positions on concrete development policy measures
- Identify the data necessary to answer development theory questions and, when needed, acquire and analyze this data yourself while explaining your findings