"Development Economics has seen an explosion of high quality empirical work in the past ten years. But despite the quality of many individual researchers, Europe is lagging behind the US in terms of number of students, faculty, and publications. Remedying this gap is important, not only for scientific reasons, but also because development research is a critical input to decision making by Governments and international Institutions. The partners in the proposed ITN are dedicated to producing the next generation of research scholars working on development issues in Europe. The ITN will harness and combine intellectual resources which are scattered across Europe to offer doctoral students a first rate training, comparable to the best opportunities available worldwide. The Network will emphasise rigorous empirical methods put to the service of fundamental questions in development economics. The work will evolve around three workpackages: WP1 (Human capital and policy evaluation) will investigate how households respond to incentives, design policies to improve education and health, and evaluate their impact. WP2 (Market access for the poor) will study market imperfections in insurance, credit, product and labour markets and evaluate the effectiveness of innovative schemes to address them. WP3 (Institutions: Micro evidence) will study the emergence of social norms, the legacy of historical institutions, and their implications for governance and accountability. Training will involve student exchanges across nodes, participation in team research projects, and support for students’ travel and field work. The distinguishing features are: (a) formal coursework with emphasis on rigorous empirical methods and exposure to other disciplines in PhD courses, workshops and summer schools. (b) active participation in data collection and field projects in developing countries, attained through participation in (often multidisciplinary) team research projects and internships with industry partners and NGOs. Fieldwork experience is an essential element of training for development economists, but is rarely offered in doctoral programs. (c) opportunities to forge relationships with faculty and students throughout Europe through exchanges, workshops, and virtual networks."