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Description edit
Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of their work is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo have... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- padamja reddy: Add a description of this character.
- neelima khetan: Founder of Seva Mandir, the eponymous NGO working in Rajasthan around child immunization and women empowerment
- jeffrey sachs
- Robinson
- Pak Solhin
- Ibu Tina
- Esther
- Kennedy
- Seva Mandir
- Pascaline Dupas
- Suharto
- Spandana
- Xu Aihua
- Michael Kremer
- Sanjay Gandhi
- Gram Vikas
- Ibu Emptat
- Pak Sudarno
- Ben Sedan
- Padmaja Reddy
- Jennifer Auma
Quotes edit
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“Consequently, it is no surprise that the poor choose their foods not mainly for their cheap prices and nutritional values, but for how good they taste. George Orwell, in his masterful description of the life of poor British worker in <The Road to Wigan Pier,> observes…"”
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“What all of this underscores is the violence, active and passive, subsumed within the functioning of the traditional family. This was, until fairly recently, ignored by most (though not all) economists, who preferred to leave that black box closed. Yet most societies rely on the goodwill of the parents to make sure that children get fed, schooled, socialized, and taken care of more generally. Given that these are the same parents who contrive to let their little girls die, how much faith should we place in their ability to get this done effectively?"”
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“Institutions need to be tailored to the local environment, and therefore any top-down attempt to change them would probably backfire. Reform, if possible at all, must be gradual and must recognize that existing institutions are most likely there for a reason.This mistrust of outside experts leads Easterly to be very skeptical not only of foreign takeovers but of foreign aid in general, in part because aid typically comes with an attempt to influence policies, often at the cost of actually worsening the politics by continuing to spend aid even when leaders are corrupt."”
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“Part of the problem is that even when governments are well intentioned, what they are trying to do is fundamentally difficult. Governments exist to a large extent to solve problems that markets cannot solve - we have already seen that in many instances government interventions is necessary precisely when, for some reason, the free market cannot do the job.”
Setting & Locations edit
- India
- Kenya
- Indonesia
- Udaipur
- United States
- Hyderabad
- China
- Bangladesh
- Delhi
- Brazil
- South Africa
- Uganda
- Mexico
- Zambia
- South Asia
- West Bengal
- Orissa
- Mumbai
- Pakistan
- Andhra Pradesh
- Morocco
- Peru
- Madagascar
- Sub-saharan Africa
- Nigeria
- Colombia
- Mali
- Europe
- Thailand
- Benin
- Ghana
- Sri Lanka
- Guntur
First Sentence edit
Every year, 9 million children die before their fifth birthday.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Abhijit V. Banerjee (Author)
- Esther Duflo (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 276
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 339.46091724
Subjects edit
Popular Tags
Links to Supplemental Material edit
- Poor Economics: The companion web site for the book, with "links to all the studies we cite, photographic essays that illustrate each chapter, and extracts and charts from a data set on key aspects of the lives of those who live on less than 99 cents per person per day in eighteen countries, which we will refer to many times in the book."
- EconTalk: Banerjee on Poverty and Poor Economics: July 11, 2011 interview with Abhijit Banerjee about the book, on the EconTalk podcast at the Library for Economics and Liberty.
- Esther Duflo / MIT150 Symposium: Lecture by Prof. Esther Duflo at MIT on rethinking development economics.
Books Cited by This Book edit
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