Understanding Poverty

by Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee (Editor), Roland Benabou (Editor), Dilip Mookherjee (Editor)

Overview

Understanding 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 design welfare policies that work better and a host of other topics. The final section is about where the puzzles lie: what are the most important anomalies, the big gaps in the way economists think about poverty? The essays talk about the puzzling reluctance of Kenyan farmers to fertilizers, the enduring power of social relationships in economic transactions in developing countries and the need to understand where aspirations come from, and much else. Every essay is written with the aim of presenting the latest and the most sophisticated in economics without any recourse to jargon or technical language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199885459
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/20/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics and Director, Poverty Action Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1993. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, an MA from Jawaharlal University, and a BSc from the University of Calcutta. Roland B'enabou is Professor of Economic and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He holds a PhD in Economics from Massachusetts Instite of Technology and Engineering diplomas from the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale des Ponts at Chauss'es in Paris. Dilip Mookherjee is Professor of Economics at Boston University, where he has taught since 1995. He has also been Director of the Institute for Economic Development there since 1998. He studied Economics at Presidency College, Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, and the London School of Economics.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Roland Bénabou and Dilip Mookherjee1. Measuring Poverty, Angus DeatonPART I: The Causes of Poverty2. Understanding Prosperity and Poverty: Geography, Institutions, and the Reversal of Fortune, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, & James Robinson3. Colonialism, Inequality, And Long-Run Paths Of Development, Stanley L. Engerman & Kenneth L. Sokoloff4. The Kuznets Curve: Yesterday and Tomorrow, Thomas Piketty5. A New Growth Approach to Poverty Alleviation, Philippe Aghion & Beatriz Armendàriz de Aghion6. Globalization and All That, Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee7. The Global Economy and the Poor, Pranab Bardhan8. The Role of Agriculture in Development, Mukesh Eswaran & Ashok Kotwal9. Fertility and Income, T. Paul Schultz10. Fertility in Developing Countries, Mukesh Eswaran11. Corruption and Development, Jean-Jacques Laffont12. Ethnic Diversity and Poverty Reduction, Edward MiguelPART II: How Should We Go About Fighting Poverty?13. Redistribution toward Low Incomes in Richer Countries, Emmanuel Saez14. Transfers and Safety Nets in Poor Countries: Revisiting the Trade-Offs and Policy Options, Martin Ravallion15. Poverty Persistence and Design of Antipoverty Policies, Dilip Mookherjee16. Child Labor, Christopher Udry17. Policy Dilemmas for Controlling Child Labor, Kaushik Basu18. The Primacy of Education, Anne Case19. Public Goods and Economic Development, Timothy Besley & Maitreesh Ghatak20. Intellectual Property and Health in Developing Countries, Jean Tirole21. Public Policies to Stimulate Development of Vaccines for Neglected Diseases, Michael Kremer22. Microinsurance: The Next Revolution?, Jonathan Morduch23. 23) Credit, Intermediation, and Poverty Reduction, Robert M. TownsendPART III: New Ways of Thinking About Poverty24. Poor but Rational?, Esther Duflo25. Better Choices to Reduce Poverty, Sendhil Mullainathan26. Nonmarket Institutions, Kaivan Munshi27. Racial Stigma: Toward a New Paradigm for Discrimination Theory, Glenn C. Loury28. Aspirations, Poverty and Economic Change, Debraj Ray

Editorial Reviews

"A 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

From the Publisher