William Russell Easterly

William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-director of the NYU Development Research Institute, which won the 2009 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge in Development Cooperation Award. He is the author of four books: Violent Saviors: The West’s Conquest of the Rest (November 2025), The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (2014), The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), which won the FA Hayek Award from the Manhattan Institute, and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001). He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed academic articles, and has written columns and reviews for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Review of Books, and Washington Post. He won the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2021, the Adam Smith Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education, 2013, not to mention the FA Hayek Award from CUNY in 2009. He is also the 11th most famous native of Bowling Green, Ohio.