Econ of Developing countries

IMPORTANT READ CAREFULLY: The goal of this sheet is to help you organize your readings each week. The sheet lists the readings for each chapter in logical order. Please follow the order of readings so that you can understand the different concepts. Questions listed help you extract important information from each reading. The questions are general but target a specific concept within each reading. Those concepts are most important from the readings, and you will be mostly tested on these concepts on the midterms. The sheet is not meant to be graded carefully. It is merely a guide to help you organize your thoughts and help you study for the midterms (some sort of outline). As you can see, most questions require long answers. Detailed long answers to each question will help you do well on the midterm. For grading purposes, a paragraph for each answer is sufficient. You are not likely to do well on midterms; however, if you don’t know the full answer for each question listed here. There will NOT be an “answer key” for these questions because they are not meant to quiz you. The questions make sure that you do all the readings entirely but with emphasis on the mentioned concepts. The midterm questions will not go into nitty-gritty details but rather general concepts and information emphasized in the many questions.

Summary of Week: Presentations, textbook readings and external readings for week one are meant to clarify what is the general definition of economic development and introduce the measure of New Human Development Index (NHDI). The measure is used to classify countries in-terms of their development. Answering questions for each required reading listed below will help you understand important concepts that you will be tested on for the midterms.

Introduction: What is Development?

Textbook Reading (Todaro and Smith): Section 1.3-1.5 (pages 16 to 29): This reading is very important to introduce a definition of economic development. It will help clarify and provide more information on some of the questions from the first presentation as well.

What is traditional economics? What is it concerned with?
Summarize the new economic view of development
What is Amartya Sen’s Approach? Summarize but hitting as many points as possible
What is the relationship between development and happiness? Be more precise. Also, comment on figure 1.2 in that section. Hint: It seems that income is important for happiness. The book explains that in detail. However, we will see from later studies mentioned in the power-point presentation that after a certain level of income, happiness does seem to decrease.
What are core values of development? Spend a paragraph on each goal.
What are the three Objectives of Development? How are the objectives different than the core values?
Read Table 1.1. Don’t memorize things in it but know what are these millennium goals are about. For your information , millennium goals are outdated. Google Sustainable Development Goals for your own information (I won’t test you on those).
Read section 1.4. Summarize it hitting the main ideas. Don’t worry about the details. Read the Conclusion in section 1.5

Introduction (Power Point Presentation): Download the Introduction presentation and answer the following questions:

What is the goal of economic development?
What are factors determining quality of life?
What is the relationship between Income and happiness? How does this differ from the book’s point of view (if any). Hint: The graph on slide 7, shows that happiness does increase with countries of higher GDP. However, after a certain level of income, it seems that happiness seems to decrease.
What are the Millennium development goals? Explain each one briefly.

New Human Development Index: How to classify countries in-terms of development?

Textbook Reading (Todaro and Smith): Section 2.2-2.3 (pages 45 to 55): What are factors of development and how to measure them.

What are the three factors of development examined here? Explain each briefly
Look at the map in figure 2.1. List 3 countries under each one of the five categories of income. Look at map key.
Why is the purchasing power parity used?
What is the NHDI?
Read Pages 51 to 54 carefully and write down all the equations you need to calculate the NHDI. There is a typo in Box 2.1 and so don’t worry about solving yet. You will in the following section. For the formulas, you can take a picture of your work and paste it here (Don’t overdo it).

External Reading: Technical Notes to Calculate the NHDI.
http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr_2013_en_technotes.pdf

This source will help you understand the process of calculating the NHDI. After answering these questions, you should be expected to calculate the NHDI on the homework or the midterm.

Go to page 2. Read it very carefully and solve this problem. Go back and forth between that and the book when things are not clear. Re-do the example and attach it here as a picture (Don’t attach more than one pic. Just prove that you did it). This is a mathematical calculation that you are responsible for.

External Reading: Human Development Report 2016.
http://www.hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016_human_development_report.pdf

Don’t read this report. Only focus on the questions.

Read Forward of the Report. Summarize it (Report’s Forward is at about page 4).
Glance generally at the report, in a sentence or so, how does it relate to our discussion about the NHDI?
Go to the Human Development Index Trend on Page 198. What is this table about? List 2 or 3 countries under each category from the table such as “High Human Development”

Textbook Reading (Todaro and Smith): Page 56:

Summarize each bullet point
What are criticisms of the NHDI?

Human Development Index (Power Point Presentation):

Starting from Slide 7 to 12. Please write down what each graph shows and what are possible implications. This is important. Refer to the Human Development report, where most of the graphs come from, if some are not clear.
I mention other criticisms on the last two slides. Understand how those make sense given the formula to calculate the NHDI as you did in the exercise before.

The Developing World

Textbook Reading (Todaro and Smith): Section 2.4 (pages 55 to 73):

Summarize, with sufficient detail, each one of the characteristics of the developing world mentioned in the chapter.
Don’t spend much time on details like the various graphs. Skip the “Boxes”

Textbook Reading (Todaro and Smith): Case Study 2 (pages 96 to 101):

You won’t be tested on this but it is very important for the homework, and so, read it very carefully. Your homework will mimic this study but with two countries you choose from the report! Details are in the homework instructions in separate document (This is not a question).

Answer Preview…………….

Summary of Week: Presentations, textbook readings and external readings for week one are meant to clarify what is the general definition of economic development and introduce the measure of New Human Development Index (NHDI). The measure is used to classify countries in-terms of their development. Answering questions for each required reading listed below will help you understand important concepts that you will be tested on for the midterms.,……………………….

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