Official Title: Econ 3510 Poverty and Economic Development

@Bowdoin College, Fall 2025

Syllabus

Introduction

1. Institutions Do Matter

• Causality and IV
• Economic Insitutions
• Panel Data and Diff-in-Diff
• Political Institutions

2. Democracy and Economic Policies

• Voting I (Median Voter Theorem)
• Voting II (Empirics)
• Regression Discontinuity
• Voting III (Empirics)
• Turnout

3. Governance Structures

• Matching
• Politicians I
• Politicians II
• Bureaucracy

4. Failures of Politics

• Corruption
• Conflict

5. Political Economy of Nondemocracies

• Nondemocracies