Organising Development

About this event

People are poor because their labor is not paid enough to afford basic needs. To understand development we need to understand the jobs of the poor and how they change over the development path. The traditional view of development is that of a structural change from agriculture to industry and services. These lectures document that parallel to this process there is a process of change in the way labor is organized. At very low levels of income, individuals work independently, either as self-employed combining their labor with land or livestock, or, if they do not own any assets, selling their labor to those who do. Over the process of development we see people coming together in organisations of increasing complexity, from a handful of people -often family members- working together in microenterprises to the large multi-sector organisations that account for most of the employment in rich economies today. The reason this matters is that it is closely linked to the allocation of talent which is a key determinant of growth. This seminar will review recent evidence on this process of organizational change, and on how it can have multiple equilibria leading to poverty traps.