About the Author:
William Easterly is a professor of economics at New York University and a director of NYU's award-winning Development Research Institute. He lives in New York City.
Review:
Wall Street Journal 2014 Books of the Year
New York Times Book Review
Bracingly iconoclastic.... Easterly's stories unfailingly reinforce a select number of crucial themes, the boldest being that the people of the so-called underdeveloped world have been systematically betrayed by the technocrats in charge of the global development agenda.”
Eduardo Porter, New York Times
"William Easterly ...is one of the profession's most determined skeptics...In the real world, Professor Easterly says, development occurs as people identify problems and push for solutions through their political systems. Setting goals that nobody is truly responsible for achieving not only misrepresents what causes poverty but also substitutes goal setting for real action.”
Los Angeles Times Review of Books
There is something indomitable about William Easterly, and he has struck the development establishment where it is weakest: its appalling human rights record.”
Bloomberg View
[Easterly] is one of the most consistently interesting and provocative thinkers on development.”
Economist
"Thought provoking."
Shelf Awareness for Readers
Easterly makes essential points about human rights, the need to accommodate local factors in developing countries and the terrible mistakes that can result from deals with corrupt regimes or self-interested organizations. His argument is made with passion and ample illustration.”
Reason
Tyranny of Experts takes various tacks--historical, theoretical, technological, statistical--to explain, in theory and in practice, why international development economics should fundamentally rethink its premises and practices.”
America
A provocative traverse of history and philosophy.”
Kirkus
"Easterly delivers a scathing assault on the anti-poverty programs associated with both the United Nations and its political and private sector supporters....A sharply written polemic intended to stir up debate about the aims of global anti-poverty campaigns."
Library Journal
Easterly's research may help start a dialog about identifying better methods for alleviating global poverty and should assist readers interested in humanitarian efforts who want to draw their own conclusions about how to aid the world's poor."
Gaurdian, UK
A provocative book that will rile the development world. But it deserves to be read by all those technocrats who jet around the planet with their simplistic top-down solutions, often ignoring rights they themselves take for granted. Ultimately, it is a timely blast against the complacency of those who think progress and prosperity can be detached from politics.”
Times of London
This powerful polemic against top-down aid projects convinces.”
Washington Post
A passionate, if fitful, argument against the conventional approach to economic development.”
Choice
Easterly (New York University) has written a book that grabs a reader's attention from the first sentence .Highly recommended”
Lancet
"Fascinating."
Forbes.com
Readable and fascinating.... I found a valuable if somewhat iconoclastic read and would recommend it to anyone in the social sector”.
Cato Institute's Regulation
"The Tyranny of Experts is intellectual comfort food for people who are skeptical of the idea that the only things standing between us and a world free of poverty are insufficient funding and political will.”
Paul Romer, New York University
"Easterly's new book shows that the expert approach to development rests on an engrained but unexamined premise: that people in poor countries cannot be trusted to make their own decisions. As this wide-ranging and compelling account shows, this assumption is doubly flawed. It's morally offensive and a sure guide to bad policy."
Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University
"Bill Easterly is simply the most interesting and provocative economist writing on development topics today."
Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize Winner, Professor of Economics at Columbia University
"In this impassioned book, William Easterly draws on a wealth of examples from history and from around the world to support his forceful call for a radical transformation in the way the world views development. Easterly shows that many of the contemporary debates about the nature of development have their roots in history and he argues that the rights of the individual and democratic values should not be trampled on by those seeking faster economic growth."
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.