POOR ECONOMICS: RETHINKING POVERTY AND THE WAYS TO END IT

Imagine you have a few billion dollars and want to spend it on the poor. How do you go about it? 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 about the poor and the world that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst. Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials (RCTs) in development economics through their award-winning Poverty Action Lab. They argue that by using RCTs and more generally, by paying careful attention to the evidence, it is possible to make accurate and often startling assessments on what really impacts the poor and what doesn't. Revelatory and impassioned, Poor Economics is a pathbreaking book that will help you to understand the real causes of poverty and how to end it.

Abhijit Banerjee is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at MIT and the author of Poor Economics. He has been named as one of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 global thinkers and has served on the U.N. Secretary-General's panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and the author of Poor Economics. Duflo is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and has received numerous academic honors and prizes including the Infosys Prize, the Dan David Prize, a John Bates Clark Medal, and a MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellowship.