Syllabus

Econ 559, Spring 2009

Prof. Andrés Rodríguez-Clare

Books:

· Acemoglu’s Modern Economic Growth

· Aghion and Howitt’s Endogenous Growth

Part I: Chapters 2, 3, 8-15 from Acemoglu

Part II: Part II of Aghion and Howitt’s book

Part III: Student’s presentations.

Papers for presentations:

· Empirics of convergence: (1) Hauk and Wacziarg’s “A Montecarlo Study of Growth Regressions,” and (2) McQuinn and Whelan’s “Conditional Convergence and the Dynamics of the Capital-Output Ration”

· Lentz and Mortensen’s “An Empirical Model of Growth through Product Innovation”

· Arkolakis’s ”Market Penetration Costs and Trade Dynamics”

· Guvenen and Kuruscu, “A Quantitative Analysis of the Evolution of the U.S. Wage Distribution: 1970-2000” and (same authors with Ozkan) "Understanding Cross-country Differences in Growth and Inequality Trends,” Coming Soon!

Grades based on problem sets and presentations.

Students should choose a paper and talk to me about it, write a referee report, and then present the paper in class. Dates to be agreed.