Readings in Development Economics, Vol. 2: Emprical Microeconomics

Rating:
Summary: A collection of good papers, but nothing new
Review: This is a collection of (excellent) empirical papers in development microeconomics. Some of the best people in academia working in this field are represented here: Angus Deaton, Chris Udry, Duncan Thomas, John Strauss, Tim Besley, and others. Almost all the papers collected in this volume are by now "classic" references in the literature. But here is also the problem. This book offers nothing that has not already been published elsewhere. If you are reading this review, chances are that you have access to a library, and you are very likely to be in college, or in graduate school. This means that you can easily find *all* these papers easily available online, for free, through JSTOR, or simply through your library. The same also holds for the other volume of this collection, which collects theory papers in micro-development. So, this is a nice book containing mostly outstanding papers, but it is nothing more than a few papers bound in a book, rather than scattered over your desk, or hidden among your files. So, if you do not have plenty of money to spend in books, I do not recommend this volume.