In my economic development class I have my students read Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion. In the book Collier outlines 4 traps to economic development (Civil War, Being Landlock, Overreliance on natural resources, and bad government). I like his straight forward approach, and he does a good job of emphasizing the macro trends in a country.
Collier has a new book (War, Guns, and Votes) out I haven't had a chance to read.
If you want to follow more of Collier's work he is now bloging occasionally (
here), but this wesbite also seems to link to his other Op-Eds.
Tomorrow I'll talk about Bill Easterly who writes another book I have my students read.
1 comment:
Hey Seth, as a TA at Wash U I was teaching Collier's 'Bottom Billion' in a nebulous field called International and Area Studies. I found it was a good book to teach from because it is easy to figure out his arguments (because he is so up front) and teach students how to positively critique arguments. They couldn't just rip him up, they had to offer alternatives. While I disagree with much of what he says personally I found the book to be a good teaching tool. Hope it all goes well!
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