The Examined Path Through Development economics — why some countries are poor

The poverty of nations is not explained by geography, culture, or the intelligence of their people — it is explained primarily by institutions, history, and the ongoing extraction of value that colonial relationships established and successor arrangements continued. Development economics has produced serious work on what produces growth and what undermines it; the honest version does not separate the question from the history that shaped the starting conditions. Poverty is not a natural state; it was, in many cases, produced.

The course sequence, in order.

Each step builds on the last.