Absolute best book on development economics (and its many failures) I have ever read

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Product Description

Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. Attempted remedies have included providing foreign aid, investing in machines, fostering education, controlling population growth, and making aid loans as well as forgiving those loans on condition of reforms. None of these solutions has delivered as promised. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work.

In this book Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people--private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors--respond to incentives. Easterly first discusses the importance of growth. He then analyzes the development solutions that have failed. Finally, he suggests alternative approaches to the problem. Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3085 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 356 pages

Review
"A highly readable and iconoclastic treatment of the determinants of economic growth."
-- Richard N. Cooper, Foreign Affairs

"It is impossible to convey the depth and range of The Elusive Quest for Growth."
-- Bruce Bartlett, Wall Street Journal

Book Info
Written in an accessible, at times irreverent style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank. Softcover.

About the Author
William Easterly is the author of The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT Press, 2001) and The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. He is Professor of Economics at New York University (Joint with Africa House), Codirector of NYU's Development Research Institute, visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Nonresident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.

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Customer Reviews

And the Wizard explains Oz...
Easterly is a brilliant and talented writer, as one would expect from the World Bank. At times, though, the Bank is isolated from the benefits of being subjected to such talent. Individual efforts are certainly reviewed, but at the end of the day, Stiglitz and others have argued that the very points Easterly makes suggests that the Bank is far off the course set by its mandate. We are therefore left with yet another recommended "fine tuning" of WB programming without a serious reflection over whether the WB is the proper mechanism for fiddling with the intricate clockworks that are national economies. I sign off by asking the Americans, Britons, Australians, French, Swiss and others from "developed" countries what it would take to allow an autocratic, bureaucratic and politically un-accountable (and this series of adjectives in no way lessens the tremendous respect I have for nearly every WB staff member I've met) organization tip-toe into THEIR administrative systems. I argue that the problem with economic tinkering in the Pacific is that it is, and looks to remain, the product of bureaucratic meddling on a scale similar to Mao's China, which undermines both the development of governance systems that can curtail corruption (i.e. local acocuntability for performance based on available resources- NOT (!!!!!!) in any way similar to efforts to make local authorities better subsidiaries of the notably corrupt central governments as is currently being pushed in the Pacific and elsewhere) AND legitimate free market systems. This book is a fantastic read, and I highly recommend it be paired with Stiglitz's "Globalization..." and Jeffrey Sach's "End of Poverty..." for a very ponderous but enriching book club series.

A Partial Answer to the Question of Why the World is the Way it is
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William Easterly is an honest answer to part of the question, "why hasn't the world improved like we thought it would?" Easterly conducts a post-mortem conference on western aid programs since the end of World War II, finding that in many cases we should have known better. The incentives created by some nations' economic environment, or the aid programs themselves led national economies into periods of stagnant or negative growth. Easterly's mantra is "people respond to incentives." Ignoring this truth, a central tenet of economics, has led to several irrational choices in the area of development aid, and many failures to achieve our objectives.

While pessimistic at times in his evaluation of what we have done in the West, the truth behind the text is that all these problems are preventable. Overall, a valuable and essential piece of information in understanding the state of the world today in regards to differing economic outcomes and how it has come to be that way.

Elementary at Best
I understand that it's a book written to be accessible to people like myself who are not economists and will NEVER be economists, but that does not mean I have to be treated like I am severely unintelligent. The reading level of this book falls far below what any college educated person should be expected to read. I don't think the author of this book is nearly as deserving of the high accolades (not to mention profits) he has been receiving for writing this book. When a book contains the phrase 'I think learning under the right circumstances is a very good thing' you know that the quality of the writing is deficient. It is elementary at best.