Welcome to
Economics of Food and Agriculture in International Development
Columbia University - Spring 2004
Prof. Will Masters
Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
www.earth.columbia.edu/cgsd/masters
Professor of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University
www.agecon.purdue.edu/staff/masters
Full syllabus, with links to readings and data sources, in html format (to view online) and in MS Word format (to print).
Lecture slides (in PowerPoint)
Week 1: Overview. Demographic transition and structural transformation
Week 2: Food consumption, nutrition and health
Week 3: Food demand: consumption preferences and consumer behavior
Week 5: Technology adoption: who adopts innovations, and why?
Week 6: Natural resource use: what happens when key assets are collectively owned
Week 7: Jeffrey Sachs guest lecture
Week 8: Rural markets: price stabilization and spatial integration
Week 9: Policy and political economy: economic explanations for the development paradox
Week 10: Chris Barrett guest lecture
Week 11: Agriculture in economic growth and Agriculture in the world economy
Week 12: The future of agriculture: from green revolution to biotechnology
Week 13: Student presentations
Joel Negin -- Impact of HIV on agriculture
Stephanie Roueche -- Cashews in Mozambique ...plus a few conclusions
Week 14: Wrap-up (a selection of earlier slides)
Numerical exercises*
Exercise 1: Food consumpion choices at low incomes (due Thursday, Feb. 5 at 5:00 pm)
Exercise 2: Farmers' production choices over time (due Friday, Feb. 27 at 5:00 pm) (scores from exercise 2)
Exercise 3: Household decisions and market outcomes (due in class Tues., March 30 at 2:10 pm) (answer key)
Exercise 4: Policy decisions and market outcomes (due in class Tues., April 27 at 2:10 pm) (answer key)
Guidance for the final exam
Hello, it's self-restraint time: I strongly urge you not to download or read the example questions/format for the final exam until you've done at least half the studying you might be able to do for this class. That way, if you can answer the example questions easily, you can stop preparing and do other stuff; if you can't answer them easily, you will have time to prepare further. Note that we will go over this practice exam in the help session on May 4th in IAB 410 from 2:00 to 4:00. The final exam itself will be May 11th, 1:00-3:00. The actual final will be shorter in length than the set of example questions linked above, and may include some of those same questions.
* Recall that, in computing course grades, each of four exercises will have equal weight and count for roughly one-eighth of the total, while the final exam (or project) will account for half. In other words, each exercise will be worth 125 points out of 1000. Please budget your time accordingly! To give you a realistic degree of flexibility, late assignments will incur a deduction of 25 points (1/5 of the total) per day of delay.