ECNM10061: pass the exams, not just read the notes
Your complete guide to The University of Edinburgh's development economics module. See where the marks are, work real practice questions, and study with an AI tutor that knows ECNM10061.
Sia generates ECNM10061 practice questions, walks through political and geography step by step, and quizzes you on the material the exam weights most heavily.
Sharpen your argument
A study finds that villages that received a clean water programme have higher child school attendance than villages that did not. An exam question asks how much weight this deserves. Which response is strongest?
Ask the identification question first: how did some villages come to receive the programme and others not?
Consider what design would resolve it: randomised assignment, a plausibly exogenous rollout, or a difference-in-differences comparison with credible parallel trends.
Then weigh the result accordingly rather than accepting or dismissing it wholesale, which is the judgement the module is training.
The weaker choice: Swinging to the blanket dismissal in option two. It sounds rigorous and it is the answer that scores worst, because it would discard most of the literature the course reads. Development economics is largely an argument about which non-experimental comparisons can be believed and why, so an answer that refuses to engage with that argument has opted out of the question. watch this!
One exam decides 70% of your grade. Seventy percent in one sitting. This whole page is built around that.
Overview
What ECNM10061 is, and where it sits
Development Economics is an Honours option surveying what modern research says about why countries and households end up where they do. The catalogue describes it as an in-depth introduction to core topics, targeted at students who already have economic theory and econometrics at undergraduate level.
The course runs on two levels. At the macro level it examines the roles of political and legal institutions, geography, international trade and history in shaping different countries' economic outcomes. At the micro level it turns to the inter-relationship between health, nutrition, education and the economic outcomes of individuals and households.
The teaching is built around recent journal articles rather than a single textbook, with Banerjee and Duflo's Poor Economics as the named reading and further material assigned per topic. Learning-by-doing through groupwork and presentations is described as an important ingredient, which the assessment reflects: a quarter of the mark is a group presentation. Contact time is concentrated, one two-hour lecture a week for ten weeks, with tutorials arranged in addition.
Always treat your own course outline and the exam timetable as authoritative.
Difficulty & time commitment
Is ECNM10061 hard, and how much time does it take?
ECNM10061 is manageable if you keep a weekly rhythm and treat the back half as the main event. The pattern is consistent: it starts gently and steepens, and the heaviest assessment is the part that separates grades.
The difficulty curve and the assessment weighting point the same way: the back half is harder and worth more. Front-loading effort there is the highest-return decision in the module.
Is this module for you
Who tends to do well, and who tends to struggle
You will likely do well if
- You read papers rather than summaries; the course is a survey of recent research.
- You can judge a research design, which is what separates a strong answer from a description of findings.
- You work well in a group, since a quarter of the mark is a group presentation.
- You are comfortable with light contact time and heavy independent reading.
You may struggle if
- You want lecture notes that contain everything. Most of the content is in the assigned articles.
- You dislike group assessment; 25% of the mark depends on it.
- Your econometrics is shaky. The course assumes you can follow an identification strategy.
- You leave the reading until revision. Seventy percent rests on an exam that asks you to use it.
- For every paper, write three lines: the question, the identification strategy, and the reason to doubt it.
- Connect the macro and micro halves explicitly; the strongest exam answers use institutional arguments to explain household-level findings.
- Use the group presentation to go deep on one literature rather than broad on several.
- Keep a running list of the standard designs used in the field and one example of each.
Syllabus
The 7 topics, topic by topic
The exam-weight marker on each topic shows where the marks concentrate. The amber topics carry the highest exam weight.
T1 · Political and legal institutions
MacroWhy institutional quality is treated as a first-order determinant of long-run outcomes, and how researchers try to establish that empirically.
T2 · Geography
MacroThe geographic account of development differences, and how it competes with the institutional one.
T3 · International trade
MacroWhat openness does for developing economies, in theory and in the evidence.
T4 · History and persistence
MacroHow historical events leave measurable traces in present-day outcomes, and the empirical strategies used to show it.
T5 · Health and nutrition
MicroThe two-way relationship between health, nutrition and economic outcomes at household level.
T6 · Education
MicroWhat raises schooling and what schooling raises, and why the two questions need different evidence.
T7 · Household economic outcomes
MicroPulling the micro strands together: how health, nutrition and education interact in determining individual and household outcomes.
How it's assessed
Assessment structure
| Component | Weight | Format & timing |
|---|---|---|
| Degree exam | 70% | Written examination in the April/May diet. April/May. Seventy percent in one sitting. |
| Group presentation | 25% | Group presentation, reflecting the course's emphasis on groupwork and presentations as an ingredient of learning. Semester 2. The main coursework component and the only substantial non-exam mark. |
| Participation | 5% | Assessed across the semester. Across the semester. Small, but with only 3.5 tutorial hours published, the opportunities to earn it are few. |
- The published components sum to 100. No separate hurdle is published for this module.
- One written paper in the April/May diet carrying 70%. The catalogue does not publish the paper length.
- Calculator policy: Not stated in the course catalogue entry.
This is an exam-cram module. With the exams at 70% of the grade and the degree exam alone at 70%, your result is overwhelmingly decided by how well you perform under time pressure. Seventy percent in one sitting.
How to actually pass it
A weekly rhythm, two checklists, and the traps to avoid
The module rewards consistency over cramming, and practice over re-reading. Here is the loop that works, then what to have nailed before each exam.
The weekly loop
Before the mid-semester checklist
- Institutional accounts of development and the evidence for them
- Geographic and historical explanations, and how they compete
- Trade and development
- The standard identification strategies used in the macro literature
Before the final heaviest topics
- Health and nutrition, in both causal directions
- Education: what raises it and what it raises
- Household-level interactions between health, nutrition and schooling
- The ability to evaluate an unfamiliar empirical claim from its design
The mistakes that cost marks
Summarising findings without the design. In a research-led course the design is the content. A findings-only answer reads as reading notes.
Treating correlation studies as worthless. The field is largely an argument about which comparisons can be believed. Blanket dismissal opts out of the question.
Splitting the group presentation by section. A presenter who only knows their own slice is exposed in questions, and the mark is for the whole.
Ignoring the macro half in the exam. Institutions, geography, trade and history are examinable in the same paper as the household material.
Teaching team
Who teaches ECNM10061
The bios below are factual. We do not rate lecturers; any star ratings are submitted by students who have taken ECNM10061.
Dr Sarthak Joshi
Listed as course organiser for Development Economics in the 2026/27 course catalogue for the School of Economics.
Teaching team as listed in the module materials reviewed. AskSia does not rate lecturers; star ratings are submitted by students who have taken ECNM10061.
Formula & concept sheet
The vocabulary and formulas you must own
- Institutions
- The political and legal rules shaping economic activity, treated as a candidate first-order cause of development differences.
- Persistence
- The measurable influence of historical events on present-day outcomes.
- Identification strategy
- The argument for why a particular comparison isolates a causal effect.
- Randomised evaluation
- Assigning a programme by lottery so that treated and untreated groups are comparable by construction.
- Difference-in-differences
- Comparing changes over time between a treated and an untreated group.
- Selection
- Non-random assignment into treatment, and the reason naive comparisons mislead.
- Human capital
- The stock of health, nutrition and education embodied in people, and a central object of the micro half.
- Poverty trap
- A self-reinforcing situation in which low initial conditions prevent the investment needed to escape them.
Common acronyms: {'term': 'SCQF', 'def': 'Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework'} · {'term': 'ECTS', 'def': 'European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System'} · {'term': 'DRPS', 'def': "Degree Regulations and Programmes of Study, the university's course catalogue"}.
Set texts
The prescribed reading
The syllabus references map straight onto these.
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
Banerjee and Duflo.
Where it fits
Prerequisites, related modules & why it matters
Students must have passed Economics 2A and Economics 2B, or the former Economics 2. Visiting students need at least four semester-long economics courses at grade B or above, including intermediate macroeconomics and microeconomics with calculus, probability and statistics, and introductory econometrics.
Your ECNM10061 study toolkit
Study the module with Sia, not just read about it
Each tool already knows ECNM10061: your syllabus, your texts, and where the marks are. Grouped by how you study, from first contact to exam week.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How is the module assessed?
Degree exam 70%, group presentation 25%, participation 5%.
What background do I need?
Economics 2A and Economics 2B, or the former Economics 2, are the formal prerequisite, and the catalogue targets the course at students with economic theory and econometrics at undergraduate level.
Is there a textbook?
Banerjee and Duflo's Poor Economics is the named reading, with further readings assigned per topic. The course surveys recent articles rather than working through a single text.
How much class time is there?
One two-hour lecture per week for ten weeks, with tutorials arranged in addition. The published totals are 20 lecture hours and 3.5 tutorial hours out of 200 hours overall.
How much of the mark is group work?
A quarter. The group presentation is 25%, which is the largest coursework component in any of the Edinburgh economics modules in this guide.
Is the course quantitative?
It assumes econometrics rather than teaching it. The work is reading empirical papers and judging what their designs support, which requires understanding the methods without deriving them.
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