Development economics explained simply: what's the difference between the macro and micro sides of the field?

Development economics sounds like a topic for "somewhere else." It's not.

In my latest Decode Econ conversation, I sat down with two economists who study the same big question — how economies, and the people inside them, actually develop — from completely different altitudes. Dr. Amrita Dhar tracks capital flows into emerging markets and, closer to home, how U.S. states split the bill for K-12 schools. Dr. Shreyasee Das studies what happens inside a household in rural India after the lights come on.

That second one stopped me. Shreyasee's research on rural electrification found that as women gained more independence, information, and control over their own lives, fertility often dropped — but in some households, so did stability and safety. Progress doesn't move in a straight line. Sometimes it just moves the friction somewhere else.

We also got into something I think about a lot: development economics isn't just a lens for poor countries. Flint's water crisis, schools without air conditioning, sewage problems in the rural South — the same forces we study abroad are sitting here in our own zip codes.

And we closed on something I want to actually do something about, not just talk about: why the researchers doing this work — especially women — aren't the ones you see on podcasts and panels. That's turning into a real project between the three of us now.

Resources

Amrita’s Resources

1. Poor Economics by Abhijeet Banerjee and Esther Duflo https://amzn.to/4cIhgFd

2. Analytical Development Economics - Kaushik Basu https://amzn.to/4cBAQTG

Shreyasee

1. Amartya Sen's Capability Approach Amartya Sen's Capability Approach https://amzn.to/4gXNf5C

2. Amartya Sen's Tanner Lecture #1: Equality of What https://tannerlectures.org/lectures/equality-of-what/

3. Amartya Sen's Tanner Lecture #2: Standard of Living

https://tannerlectures.org/lectures/the-standard-of-living/

4. Women's Role in Economic Development by Ester Boserup

https://amzn.to/4AbIJsZ