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I am looking for some good books on Development economics. My background is in mathemathics and statistics (with working knowledge of intermediate micro and macro), so a "good" book needs to be rigorous yet also provide intuition.
What are people reading these days when it comes to this topic?
Development economics has a distinct flavor among subfields in Economics, in that it usually opts for a more socio-economic, geopolitical and historical approach rather than mathematical modelling. But they do use rigorous quantitative methods as regards empirical studies.
Anyway a book that can certainly show you how this subfield thinks is E. Wayne Nafziger's "Economic Development" (850 pages long - in hardcover, the book weighs 1.5 Kgr!)
See also the scientific journal "Journal of Development Economics"
Typical, high quality, grad school books on economic growth are:
"Economic Growth" by Barro and Sala-i-Martin, and "Introduction to Modern Economic Growth" by Daron Acemoglu.
Economic development is a very fragmented field, with people like Chris Udry focusing on finding out how families in Africa adopt pineapple planting technology, while Albert Hirschman instead used to think of getting developing countries to jump to a new stage of development through industrial policy guided towards a few modern industries and Amartya Sen worrying instead about true economic freedom of individuals as a basis for development.
It will be hard to find an encompassing textbook.
Its also worth mentioning that there are interesting alternative views, for example in the book "Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective" by Chang.
A classical reference textbook is Economic Development by Michael P. Todaro and Stephen C. Smith.
A new book just came out by two well known development economists, Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet, Development Economics Theory and practice (2016).
Abstract: Development Economics: Theory and Practice provides students and practitioners with the perspectives and the tools they need to think analytically and critically about the current major economic development issues in the world. Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet identify seven key dimensions of development; growth, poverty, vulnerability, inequality, basic needs, sustainability, and quality of life, and use them to structure the contents of the text. This book gives a historical perspective on the evolution of thought in development. It uses theory and empirical analysis to present readers with a full picture of how development works, how its successes and failures can be assessed, and how alternatives can be introduced. The authors demonstrate how diagnostics, design of programs and policies, and impact evaluation can be used to seek new solutions to the suffering and violence caused by development failures. This text is fully engaged with the most cutting edge research in the field, and equips readers with analytical tools for the impact evaluation of development programs and policies, illustrated with numerous examples. It is underpinned throughout by a wealth of student-friendly features including case studies, quantitative problem sets, end-of-chapter questions, and extensive references.
I would suggest you Ray, D. Development Economics. It received an endorsement by no less a person than Amyrta Sen, Nobel Prize Winner 1996.
