Description
Book SynopsisUnderstanding poverty and what to do about it, is perhaps the central concern of all of economics. Yet the lay public almost never gets to hear what leading professional economists have to say about it. This volume brings together twenty-eight essays by some of the world leaders in the field, who were invited to tell the lay reader about the most important things they have learnt from their research that relate to poverty. The essays cover a wide array of topics: the first essay is about how poverty gets measured. The next section is about the causes of poverty and its persistence, and the ideas range from the impact of colonialism and globalization to the problems of excessive population growth, corruption and ethnic conflict. The next section is about policy: how should we fight poverty? The essays discuss how to get drug companies to produce more vaccines for the diseases of the poor, what we should and should not expect from micro-credit, what we should do about child labor, how to
Trade ReviewA serious examination of where we stand and what we need to do. * Nicholas Kristof, The New York Review of Books *
Mass poverty is mankind's oldest, yet still most pressing, problem. Understanding Poverty describes the attack that economists are making to understand it on many different fronts. Every reader of the essays in this superb volume will appreciate the currrent excitement of development economics and the enormous progress it has made in the last two decades. * George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001 *
Table of ContentsAbhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou and Dilip Mookherjee: Introduction 1: Angus Deaton: Measuring Poverty PART I: The Causes of Poverty 2: Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, & James Robinson: Understanding Prosperity and Poverty: Geography, Institutions, and the Reversal of Fortune 3: Stanley L. Engerman & Kenneth L. Sokoloff: Colonialism, Inequality, And Long-Run Paths Of Development 4: Thomas Piketty: The Kuznets Curve: Yesterday and Tomorrow 5: Philippe Aghion & Beatriz Armendàriz de Aghion: A New Growth Approach to Poverty Alleviation 6: Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee: Globalization and All That 7: Pranab Bardhan: The Global Economy and the Poor 8: Mukesh Eswaran & Ashok Kotwal: The Role of Agriculture in Development 9: T. Paul Schultz: Fertility and Income 10: Mukesh Eswaran: Fertility in Developing Countries 11: Jean-Jacques Laffont: Corruption and Development 12: Edward Miguel: Ethnic Diversity and Poverty Reduction PART II: How Should We Go About Fighting Poverty? 13: Emmanuel Saez: Redistribution toward Low Incomes in Richer Countries 14: Martin Ravallion: Transfers and Safety Nets in Poor Countries: Revisiting the Trade-Offs and Policy Options 15: Dilip Mookherjee: Poverty Persistence and Design of Antipoverty Policies 16: Christopher Udry: Child Labor 17: Kaushik Basu: Policy Dilemmas for Controlling Child Labor 18: Anne Case: The Primacy of Education 19: Timothy Besley & Maitreesh Ghatak: Public Goods and Economic Development 20: Jean Tirole: Intellectual Property and Health in Developing Countries 21: Michael Kremer: Public Policies to Stimulate Development of Vaccines for Neglected Diseases 22: Jonathan Morduch: Microinsurance: The Next Revolution? 23: Robert M. Townsend: 23) Credit, Intermediation, and Poverty Reduction PART III: New Ways of Thinking About Poverty 24: Esther Duflo: Poor but Rational? 25: Sendhil Mullainathan: Better Choices to Reduce Poverty 26: Kaivan Munshi: Nonmarket Institutions 27: Glenn C. Loury: Racial Stigma: Toward a New Paradigm for Discrimination Theory 28: Debraj Ray: Aspirations, Poverty and Economic Change
