Development Economics

Evaluating the Impact of Infrastructure: A Beginner's Guide to Difference-in-Differences with the Jamuna Bridge

When a major bridge connected millions of people in northwest Bangladesh to the capital in 1998, did the region's economy take off? This beginner-friendly Python tutorial uses satellite images of nighttime lights to compare the connected region with a similar one that stayed isolated, before and after the bridge opened.

Do Institutions Cause Prosperity? An IV Tutorial in Python

Do good institutions make countries richer? This Python tutorial revisits the 2001 study by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, which uses death rates of early European settlers in 64 former colonies to isolate the effect of institutions, and shows that a simple comparison understates that effect. It comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.

Do Institutions Cause Prosperity? An IV Tutorial in Stata

Do good institutions make countries richer? Following the 2001 study by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson in Stata, we use the death rates of early European settlers in 64 former colonies as a natural experiment, and find an effect much larger than a simple comparison suggests. The tutorial includes an interactive app that runs in your web browser.

Converging to Convergence: Understanding the Main Ideas of the Convergence Literature

Why have poor countries grown faster than rich ones since around 2000, after decades of falling behind? We reproduce a 2021 study by Kremer, Willis and You showing that the policies, institutions and schooling that predict growth have themselves become more alike across countries. This Stata tutorial comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.