poor economics by abhijit v banerjee and esther duflo

(It's not a bad read for economists either.) For those who don't know: there's a longstanding feud between Sachs and Easterly-who sit at opposite ends of Manhattan at Columbia and NYU respectively-over, among other things, whether giving more aid to poor countries actually does any good, with Sachs arguing that it does, and Easterly basically arguing that if you don't have good 'institutions'-which no one ever quite fully defines-nothing is going to help. It has a tremendous breadth of coverage, and I would absolutely recommend it first (before anything by Sachs or Easterly, for example) for those interested in development economics. This is one of those rare books that strikes the right balance between being choked full of fascinating information, and not being over the head of a non-specialists.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio. This important book illuminates how the poor live, and offers all of us an opportunity to think of a world beyond poverty.

Their work defies certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low. Drawing on this and their 15 years of research from Chile to India, Kenya to Indonesia, they have identified wholly new aspects of the behavior of poor people, their needs, and the way that aid or financial investment can affect their lives. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab, is being carried out in dozens of countries.

But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst.Ībhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world’s poor.

Poor economics by abhijit v banerjee and esther duflo