Hoisted from comments:

For the past couple of years, I have been trying to learn about development problems through news, blogs and popular books (I am a retired mathematician who worked in pure topics like topology)…

Even though the research article are not completely understandable, they seem to give some feel but also indicate the inadequacies in techniques…

Then I shift to other blogs etc. I seem to be able to trust empirical work despite such inadequacies, like the work indicated by Paul Collier in “The Bottom Billion”.

Are there any suggestions to understand ‘development economics’ better. Mike Reed suggests in his papers that what many economists use for practical purposes is some undergraduate economics, the rest is for status.

Let me offer a few thoughts, although in reverse.

Does most economic theory serve status alone? Too much does feel like mathematical masturbation. Even so, a great deal is extremely useful and insightful. The trick is to learn to separate the two. I still struggle to do so.

Keep in mind, some undergraduate economic theory is simpler, but also simply wrong. Take the notion that trade is driven by comparative advantage, for instance. Comparative advantage is a sensible argument regularly trotted out by think tankers and The Economist, and yet it has little empirical support in reality. The more sophisticated models of trade–by Helpman, Grossman, and Krugman, for instance (yes, that Krugman)–appear to be much better at describing actual trade flows and policy. But this theory is less commonly seen at the undergraduate level.

What about the development economics literature? Unfortunately much of the good economics is poorly written, and the well-written economics is seldom good.

There are a few exceptions. Before Paul Krugman started writing for the Times, he wrote highly readable, thoughtful books on economic policy for the non-economist, based on some of the most advanced research in macroeconomics (including his own Nobel-eligible work). Ever since Bush came along, however, Krugman has turned more political (and a bit shrill), and the economics writing has been crowded out.

Then there is Paul Collier’s book. It offers, in my opinion, very confident conclusions based on still preliminary research and a partial reading of the literature. The book is very popular in the development agencies. If you know intimately the papers on which the conclusions are based, however, I think you can’t help but be less sanguine. But to a non-expert, those challenges may not be obvious.

So what to do?

Dani Rodrik and Rohini Pande teach an introductory course on development at the Kennedy School, and their excellent syllabus is here. That is a good place to start.

In general, looking online for syllabi in development economics is a good idea–look for senior undergraduate seminars, or introductory graduate seminars. These will give you a good sense of what different scholars think is relevant. Some professors post their syllabi on their web pages, or will e-mail them on request. It’s a shame so few are posted. Perhaps readers can suggest other syllabi?

Remember, however, that economists conceive of development somewhat narrowly, and stick to the problems that their select few methods can handle well. There’s a wealth of anthropology, history and political science worth reading. The best development economists, in my opinion, are the ones who have read the most outside of economics.

In case you haven’t figured this out, however, I’m not precisely in the middle of the discipline’s main stream. So caution with taking any of this academic’s advice.