Economic Development, the leading textbook in this field, provides your 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, to show how theory relates to the problems and prospects of developing countries.

Hallmark Features

The hallmark approach, shaped by the authors’ personal experience and extensive research:

• 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.
• Coverage of topics is structured to allow instructors to adapt lecture topics based on their individual course.
• Essential principles of economics relevant to understanding development problems are highlighted in boldface and are explained in detail where appropriate.
• The material is sufficiently broad in scope and rigorous in coverage to be used in any undergraduate and some graduate development economics courses.

Features

• Country-specific Case Studies at the end of each chapter reflect and illustrate specific problems discussed in the chapter.
• Voices of the Poor boxes give students perspective on the issues faced by citizens in developing and underdeveloped nations.

The text is organized into 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.

New to this edition

• New or thoroughly updated cases at the end of each chapter
• New in-depth case study of economic development in India
• Expanded, thoroughly updated country cases of China and Brazil
• Comparative cases: Burundi and Rwanda; Uganda and Kenya; Mauritius and Botswana
• Sustainable Development Goals: New section on goals, progress, and challenges
• Climate change: Regional predictions; mitigation, resilience and adaptation policy, part of a full chapter on Environment and Development
• Convergence: Perspectives on the 200-year income divergence, plus the recent shift toward (re)convergence
• Behavioral Economics: Findings for poverty; physical and mental health
• Analysis NGOs and civil society roles, as well as of private and public sector
• Inclusive growth diagnostics