README with contents

README.md

@@ -2,15 +2,58 @@
  Materials for The Graduate Center's Spring 2016 Economics Development II PhD seminar.
 
 
- _Lectures and Reading Notes written as Jupyter Notebooks_
+ __Lectures and Reading Notes written as Jupyter Notebooks__
 
-| notebook  | nbviewer          | Title |
-| --------|:-------------:| -----:|
-| [jupyter_notebooks] | | Economics with Jupyter Notebooks  |
-| [SFM] |  |The Specific Factors Model |
-|[Lucas88] |  |Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries? |
+This is a repository of [jupyter notebooks] on Development
+Microeconomics.  It is starting off rather small but I intend to add
+more material over time on classic (and not so classic) models
+and empirical studies in the fields of trade and growth,
+household economics, equilibrium models of the size distribution of firms,
+the political economy of property rights and institutions, the microeconomic
+theory of contracts and intermediation, and program impact evaluation.  
 
+These are all topics we are covering in the course of a Spring 2016 PhD
+Development Economics seminar at The Graduate Center of the
+City University of New York.
 
-[jupyter_notebooks]: ..blob/master/notebooks/jupyter_notebooks.ipynb
-[Lucas88]: ..blob/master/notebooks/Lucas88.ipynb
-[SFM]: ..blob/master/notebooks/SFM.ipynb
+This is less like a coherent sequential collection of lecture notes and more
+like an idiosyncratic collection of reading notes with
+embedded model simulations and data analyses for a set of interesting
+academic papers and useful model frameworks. Some are just notes and tips
+on jupyter notebooks and scientific python for building useful model simulations
+or visualizations.   
+
+The notebooks are in the [notebooks folder] of this repository. The best way
+to explore the content is to clone
+this repository to your own computer or cloud service and run them
+interactively there.  If you just want to view them with out interaction
+the Links in the table below lead to static views via the jupyter [nbviewer]
+service.
+
+The course site [dev-ii-seminar.readthedocs.org] has the reading list
+and syllabus for the course and auto-generated styled HTML and PDF versions of
+all this content (but as of 2/6 not all repo content was converting).
+
+There are only a few draft notebooks in the collection now.  I hope to expand
+this somewhat as the semester advances.  I welcome your comments, suggestions
+and contributions (feel free to open a github issue or make a pull request).
+
+
+| Lectures and Reading notes |  |
+| --------| :-----|
+| [jupyter_notebooks]  | Economics with Jupyter Notebooks  |
+| [SFM] |The Specific Factors Model |
+| [Lucas88] |Lucas' 1990 AER paper 'Why Doesn't Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?'' |
+| __Jupyter and python tips__ | |
+| [DataAPIs] | Use the pandas library and a data API to access online datasets |
+
+
+
+[jupyter notebooks]:https://jupyter.org/
+[nbviewer]:http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/
+[notebooks folder]:https://github.com/jhconning/Dev-II/tree/master/notebooks
+[dev-ii-seminar.readthedocs.org]:http://dev-ii-seminar.readthedocs.org/
+[jupyter_notebooks]: http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/jhconning/Dev-II/blob/master/notebooks/jupyter_notebooks.ipynb
+[Lucas88]: http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/jhconning/Dev-II/blob/master/notebooks/Lucas88.ipynb
+[SFM]: http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/jhconning/Dev-II/blob/master/notebooks/SFM.ipynb
+[DataAPIs]:http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/jhconning/Dev-II/blob/master/notebooks/DataAPIs.ipynb