This course enhances cross-cultural understanding through the discussion of practical, ethical, and epistemological issues in conducting social science and applied research in foreign countries or unfamiliar communities. It includes a research practicum to help students develop interviewing, participant-observation, and other qualitative research skills, as well as critical discussion of case studies. The course is open to all interested students, but intended particularly for those planning to undertake exploratory research or applied work abroad. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

Use the lovable character Curious George to capture your students’ attention while teaching about personal finance and economics. Each lesson features a specific Curious George children’s book and includes fun activities to help your students learn about economics. Economic concepts will include goods and services, natural, capital, and human resources, production, specialization, interdepenence, and saving.

Includes 5 lessons.

Describes a simple business, leading to a discussion on inflation/deflation. It also touches on income statements. [Economics playlist: Lesson 1 of 20]

Continues the description of the cupcake business, inflation/deflation, and the income statement. [Economics playlist: Lesson 2 of 20]

Uses a spreadsheet to show why prices decrease when utiliation is low and why prices increase when utilization is high. [Economics playlist: Lesson 3 of 20]

D-Lab Development addresses issues of technological improvements at the micro level for developing countries—in particular, how the quality of life of low-income households can be improved by adaptation of low cost and sustainable technologies. Discussion of development issues as well as project implementation challenges are addressed through lectures, case studies, guest speakers and laboratory exercises. Students form project teams to partner with mostly local level organizations in developing countries, and formulate plans for an IAP site visit. (Previous field sites include Ghana, Brazil, Honduras and India.) Project team meetings focus on developing specific projects and include cultural, social, political, environmental and economic overviews of the countries and localities to be visited as well as an introduction to the local languages.

D-Lab: Design addresses problems faced by undeserved communities with a focus on design, experimentation, and prototyping processes. Particular attention is placed on constraints faced when designing for developing countries. Multidisciplinary teams work on semester-long projects in collaboration with community partners, field practitioners, and experts in relevant fields. Topics covered include design for affordability, design for manufacture, sustainability, and strategies for working effectively with community partners and customers. Students may continue projects begun in EC.701J D-Lab I: Development.

This course emphasizes dynamic models of growth and development. Topics covered include: migration, modernization, and technological change; static and dynamic models of political economy; the dynamics of income distribution and institutional change; firm structure in developing countries; development, transparency, and functioning of financial markets; privatization; and banks and credit market institutions in emerging markets.

At MIT, this course was team taught by Prof. Robert Townsend, who taught for the first half of the semester, and Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, who taught during the second half. On OCW we are only including materials associated with sessions one through 13, which comprise the first half of the class.

In this segment from Curious, learn about creating energy from solar rays to meet the growing energy needs of the world.

In recent years, the redistribution of risk has created conditions for natural and technological disasters to become more widespread, more difficult to manage, and more discriminatory in their effects. Policy and planning decision-makers frequently focus on the impact that human settlement patterns, land use decisions, and risky technologies can have on vulnerable populations. However, to ensure safety and promote equity, they also must be familiar with the social and political dynamics that are present at each stage of the disaster management cycle. Therefore, this course will provide students with: An understanding of the breadth of factors that give rise to disaster vulnerability; and A foundation for assessing and managing the social and political processes associated with disaster policy and planning.

This course examines the growing importance of medicine in culture, economics and politics. It uses an historical approach to examine the changing patterns of disease, the causes of morbidity and mortality, the evolution of medical theory and practice, the development of hospitals and the medical profession, the rise of the biomedical research industry, and the ethics of health care in America.

This video teaches the concepts of Division of Labor and Specialization. Following the video, students can take an interactive quiz to test their knowledge and share there results.

In this macroeconomics problem, students check to see whether they understand the role nominal aggregate demand and inflation expectations play in determining the economy's output level and inflation rate.

The lecture focused on the banking system and included a discussion about total reserves, required reserves and excess reserves. Students practiced calculating each category in pairs and then compared their solutions with those of the instructor.

This document is a Docoumented Problem Solving exercise that utilizes the Keynesian model of the macroeconomy.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was introduced in class as a way to determine the value of a country's output. Consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports were discussed as the components of GDP. Items that are excluded from GDP were also discussed.

Following a lecture about unemployment, students are asked to calculate the unemployment rate. They will need to apply their knowledge about unemployment and the labor force in order to make the calculation.

Determining a Tax Structure - The different tax structures are reinforced through the calculation of the tax rate at two different income levels.

In this assignment, students think about four events that would affect a country's exchange rate. Without actually drawing a supply and demand diagram, students say what direction, if at all, each curve would shift��and whether the currency would appreciate or depreciate as a result.

The topic of gross domestic product (GDP) was introduced in class. The components of GDP - consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports - were discussed. The items that are excluded from GDP and the difference between GDP and gross national product (GNP) were also explained.