Economic Development, 12th edition

Published by Pearson (April 29, 2014) © 2015

  • Michael P. Todaro New York University and The Population Council
  • Stephen D. Smith University of Winnipeg

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For courses on economic development

A complete, balanced introduction to the theory, issues, and latest research.

Economic Development,Twelfth Edition—the leading textbook in this field—provides students with a complete and balanced introduction to the requisite theory, driving policy issues, and latest research. Todaro and Smith take a policy-oriented approach, presenting economic theory in the context of critical policy debates and country-specific case studies so students see how theory relates to the problems and prospects of developing countries.

Teaching and Learning Experiences


This program presents a better teaching and learning experience–for you and your students.

  • Use the text’s Hallmark Approach to presenting engaging information: Shaped by the authors’ personalities, this approach is backed up with extensive research and travel to provide the best data possible.
  • Teach with strong pedagogy tools: The text reinforces central key concepts by presenting a clear learning path for students.
  • Give students a real-world global perspective: Students are able togain a unique perspective about world issues from two authors who strive to address different sides to problems.

Use the text’s Hallmark Approach to presenting engaging information

  • The Hallmark Approach, shaped by the authors’ personal experience and extensive research:
    • NEW! Updated statistics. Change continues to be very rapid in the developing world. Throughout the text, data and statistics have been updated to reflect the most recent available information at the time of revision, typically 2011 or 2012, sometimes 2013.
    • Teaches economic development within the context of country-specific examples so that theory is demonstrated through real-world issues.
    • Adopts a problem-and policy-oriented presentation to foster students’ ability to understand contemporary economic problems and to reach independent and informed conclusions.
    • Uses the best and most recent available data and the appropriate theoretical tools to illuminate common problems of developing countries.
    • Focuses on a wide range of developing countries, not only as independent nation-states but also in relation to one another and in their interactions with rich nations.
    • Recognizes the necessity of treating the problems of development and underdevelopment from institutional, structural, and market perspectives.
    • Views development and underdevelopment in both domestic and international contexts, stressing the increasing interdependence of the world economy.
    • Considers the economic, social, and institutional problems of underdevelopment as closely interrelated and requiring coordinated solutions at local, national, and international levels.

Teach with strong pedagogy tools

  • NEW! Findings Boxes.  New Findings boxes address such topics as long-lasting impacts of colonial institutions (Peru); how coordination and monitoring by villagers leads to better health outcomes (Uganda); how social norms facilitated or constrained changing patterns of fertility (Bangladesh); and comparative impacts of conditional versus unconditional cash transfers to the poor (Malawi).  Other boxes examine global findings such as unmet contraceptives demand across countries. The number of Findings boxes has been approximately doubled for the Twelfth Edition. 
  • NEW! Policy Boxes. New policy boxes examine such topics as the efforts of Niger–one of the world’s poorest countries–to adapt to the climate change already impacting the country, and to build resilience against unknown future climate change; and what we learned from the 2011—2012 famine in the Horn of Africa.  Other new policy boxes address global findings, such as the extent of contraception use and the extent of still-unmet demand for contraceptives in developing countries; and the UN’s new unexpectedly increased population projections through this century.
  • The text provides essential principles of economics relevant to understanding development problems are highlighted in boldface and are explained in detail where appropriate.
  • The Country-Specific Case Studies at the end of each chapter reflect and illustrate specific problems discussed in the chapter.
  • Three-Part Organization. This text is organized into the following three distinct parts:
    • Part One focuses on the nature and meaning of development and underdevelopment, and its various manifestations in developing nations. The growth experience of now-developed countries is examined, four classic theories of development are presented, and recent development models are introduced.
    • Parts Two and Three focus on major domestic and international development problems and policies, such as economic growth, poverty and income distribution, population, migration, and urbanization.
    • The book concludes with the authors’ look ahead at key emerging issues in economic development.
  • Coverage of topics is structured to allow instructors to adapt lecture topics based on their individual course.
  • Marginal glossaries present each term of significance to the topic of economic development is highlighted in the text and defined in the margin at the spot where it is first used. All these terms are also presented alphabetically in the Glossary at the back of the book.
  • Numbered subsections facilitate a tailored course design and extended class focus on selected topics.

Give students a real-world global perspective

  • NEW! Global crisis. A major update and expansion of the new section on the impacts and potential longer-term implications of the recent global financial crisis on economic development, examining conditions that caused the crisis, its aftermath, and possible broader implications and large differences across developing nations and regions.
  • NEW! Prologue in Chapter 1.   Chapter 1 is launched with a new introductory section describes for students how much has changed over the past two decades in a majority of countries in the developing world, and in greater autonomy and nascent leadership of some developing countries in international economic and political relationships.   The chapter compares conditions today to those prevailing in 1992—a pivotal period in a number of ways, which is also close to the time when many students were born.
  • NEW! Violent conflict. The Eleventh Edition provided an entirely new major section on the causes and consequences of violent conflict, postconflict recovery and development, and prevention of conflict through an improved understanding of its major causes; the Twelfth Edition more fully develops and extends this section, incorporating recent developments.
  • NEW! full-length, three-way comparative case study of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. The full-length end-of-chapter comparative case studies have long been one of the most popular features of the text.  For this edition, an entirely new three-way comparative case study of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Hondurasis introduced at the end of Chapter 14, which addresses topics of conflict, foreign investment, remittances, and foreign aid; the study also addresses the themes of very long term comparative development addressed in some of the existing and updated case studies such as those comparing Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire; Pakistan and Bangladesh; and Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Each of the comparative cases also has a special theme, such as human development, poverty, environment, and structural transformation.
  • NEW! Measures. Measurement is an ever-present issue in the field of economic development. The United Nations Development Program released its Multidimensional Poverty Index in August 2010 and its New Human Development Index in November 2010. The text examines the index formulas, explains how they differ from earlier indexes, reports on findings, and reviews issues surrounding the active debate on these measures. Each has been updated since its initial release, as covered in the Twelfth Edition. 
  • NEW! Topics. Other new topics briefly introduced in this edition include short sections on the new firm-level international trade research and the developing countries; the emergence of “Sustainable Development Goals” as successors to the MDGs; corporate social responsibility; and food price trends.
  • NEW! Additional updates. Other updates include a further expansion of the section on microfinance, including new designs, potential benefits, successes to date, and some limitations; further expanded coverage of China.
  • The Voices of the Poor Boxes give students perspective on the issues faced by citizens in developing and underdeveloped nations.
  • The material is sufficiently broad in scope and rigorous in coverage to be used in any undergraduate and some graduate development economics courses. 
  • Applications of contemporary models to new topics from multiple equilibrium economic development models help explain the persistence of violent ethnic conflict and of harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation while at the same time indicating how the use of these frameworks has helped inspire strategies for ending these practices.

Use the text’s Hallmark Approach to presenting engaging information
  • Updated statistics. Change continues to be very rapid in the developing world. Throughout the text, data and statistics have been updated to reflect the most recent available information at the time of revision, typically 2011 or 2012, sometimes 2013.

Teach with strong pedagogy tools

  • Findings Boxes.  New Findings boxes address such topics as long-lasting impacts of colonial institutions (Peru); how coordination and monitoring by villagers leads to better health outcomes (Uganda); how social norms facilitated or constrained changing patterns of fertility (Bangladesh); and comparative impacts of conditional versus unconditional cash transfers to the poor (Malawi).  Other boxes examine global findings such as unmet contraceptives demand across countries. The number of Findings boxes has been approximately doubled for the Twelfth Edition. 
  • Policy Boxes. New policy boxes examine such topics as the efforts of Niger–one of the world’s poorest countries–to adapt to the climate change already impacting the country, and to build resilience against unknown future climate change; and what we learned from the 2011—2012 famine in the Horn of Africa.  Other new policy boxes address global findings, such as the extent of contraception use and the extent of still-unmet demand for contraceptives in developing countries; and the UN’s new unexpectedly increased population projections through this century.
Give students a real-world global perspective
  • Global crisis. A major update and expansion of the new section on the impacts and potential longer-term implications of the recent global financial crisis on economic development, examining conditions that caused the crisis, its aftermath, and possible broader implications and large differences across developing nations and regions.
  • Prologue in Chapter 1.   Chapter 1 is launched with a new introductory section describes for students how much has changed over the past two decades in a majority of countries in the developing world, and in greater autonomy and nascent leadership of some developing countries in international economic and political relationships.   The chapter compares conditions today to those prevailing in 1992–a pivotal period in a number of ways, which is also close to the time when many students were born.
  • Violent conflict. The Eleventh Edition provided an entirely new major section on the causes and consequences of violent conflict, postconflict recovery and development, and prevention of conflict through an improved understanding of its major causes; the Twelfth Edition more fully develops and extends this section, incorporating recent developments.
  • New, full-length, three-way comparative case study of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. The full-length end-of-chapter comparative case studies have long been one of the most popular features of the text.  For this edition, an entirely new three-way comparative case study of Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Hondurasis introduced at the end of Chapter 14, which addresses topics of conflict, foreign investment, remittances, and foreign aid; the study also addresses the themes of very long term comparative development addressed in some of the existing and updated case studies such as those comparing Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire; Pakistan and Bangladesh; and Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Each of the comparative cases also has a special theme, such as human development, poverty, environment, and structural transformation.
  • New measures. Measurement is an ever-present issue in the field of economic development. The United Nations Development Program released its Multidimensional Poverty Index in August 2010 and its New Human Development Index in November 2010. The text examines the index formulas, explains how they differ from earlier indexes, reports on findings, and reviews issues surrounding the active debate on these measures. Each has been updated since its initial release, as covered in the Twelfth Edition. 
  • New topics. Other new topics briefly introduced in this edition include short sections on the new firm-level international trade research and the developing countries; the emergence of “Sustainable Development Goals” as successors to the MDGs; corporate social responsibility; and food price trends.
  • Additional updates. Other updates include a further expansion of the section on microfinance, including new designs, potential benefits, successes to date, and some limitations; further expanded coverage of China.

Brief Contents

I. Principles and Concepts

  1. Introducing Economic Development: A Global Perspective
  2. Comparative Economic Development
  3. Classic Theories of Economic Growth and Development
  4. Contemporary Models of Development and Underdevelopment

II. Problems and Policies: Domestic

  1. Poverty, Inequality, and Development
  2. Population Growth and Economic Development: Causes, Consequences, and Controversies
  3. Urbanization and Rural-Urban Migration: Theory and Policy
  4. Human Capital: Education and Health in Economic Development
  5. Agricultural Transformation and Rural Development
  6. The Environment and Development
  7. Development Policymaking and the Roles of Market, State, and Civil Society

III. Problems and Policies: International and Macro

  1. International Trade Theory and Development Strategy
  2. Balance of Payments, Debt, Financial Crises, and Stabilization Policies
  3. Foreign Finance, Investment, Aid, and Conflict: Controversies and Opportunities
  4. Finance and Fiscal Policy for Development

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