Core Courses

The MPA/ID program requires two years (four terms) of full-time study at HKS. The first year is dedicated to courses especially designed for this program, which introduce students to the main economic, quantitative, political, and managerial tools needed by analysts and leaders in the area of development. A chronological listing of the MPA/ID Core Courses and degree requirements is available from the Office of the Registrar.

MPA/ID core courses are taught by our top professors. In the first year, MPA/ID students can expect to be taught by an experienced team including full professors Abadie, Frankel, Pande, Pritchett, and Rodrik. The rigorous core of required courses includes the following course sequences:

• The microeconomic analysis sequence covers consumer and producer theory, risk and behavior under uncertainty, general equilibrium, game theory, welfare economics, and economics of information.
• The macroeconomics sequence presents growth theory, intergenerational models, consumption, savings and investment, models of short-run fluctuations, monetary and exchange rate policy in the small open economy, and theories of financial crises.
• The quantitative methods sequence introduces students to the tools of quantitative and statistical reasoning used to address policy problems, including optimization, probability theory, experimental design, the linear statistical model and its extensions, and econometric specification and testing.
• The course on economic development provides a graduate-level overview of the theory of and evidence on economic development from a policy-oriented perspective, covering topics like economic convergence and patterns of development, productivity and technological change, poverty and inequality, health and education, demography, industrialization, international integration, and recent economic history.
• The institutions in development course explores the effect of institutions on economic development, drawing on theoretical and empirical insights from a variety of disciplines. The course focuses particular attention on the provision of basic public goods such as sanitation, law and order, and the maintenance of natural resources.
• The course on management in a development context introduces students to critical concepts in organization theory, public management, and the practice of development to enable them to understand the individual, structural, and systemic underpinnings of good management and governance.
• MPA/ID students are required to take a course in either good governance or democratization (a list of approved courses that satisfy this requirement is available from the Office of the Registrar). The good governance courses cover the theories, conceptual tools, and comparative methods useful for understanding the principles and problems of good governance. The courses on democratization examine the evolution of democracies in different countries over extended periods of time, focusing on the conditions under which democracies have expanded or contracted.
• The two courses on applications and cases challenge students to apply the core knowledge to contemporary policy issues in specific developing countries in workshops spanning the two years. Cases examine a wide range of development issues, including the design and implementation of structural adjustment programs and an assessment of their social impacts; dealing with balance of payments crises; formation of regional trade arrangements; the timing and sequencing of transitions to a market economy; evaluating programs and policies for HIV prevention and AIDS care; and reform of the civil service. The second year case workshop focuses more on professional skills needed in the workplace.

These complementary courses enable the students to combine high-level economic and empirical analysis with a sophisticated understanding of institutional realities and possibilities.