Poor Economics
A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty
by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo · first published 2011
64% recommend36% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Field-study-based look at how the poor actually live, borrow, and run small businesses, using randomized trials to show which aid ideas work. Suits readers wanting to rethink assumptions about poverty.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of the work they do is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, flat out harmful misperceptions at worst. Banerjee and Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Their work transforms certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that p
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…story. Few people dig deeper because digging deeper is hard. As far as I know, http://givewell.org/ is the best thing out there when it comes to evaluating charities. Also, I highly recommend reading Poor Economics, a book that just came out that describes some more solid research using randomized trials.
on “Hands Off Our Houses (follow up on the $300 house idea)” ↗Don't just read Moyo. Read 'Poor Economics' by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Duflo is at MIT and is all about trials to figure out what works with aid. Read 'The Bottom Billion' by Paul Collier who is a development economist at Oxford. Read…
on “Why I stopped being a voluntourist ” ↗…of illness, which is (at least somewhat) what the employer-provided insurance does. This is probably also the main reason state-provided health insurance might be a good idea. Banerjee's and Duflo's 'Poor Economics' gives you a more detailed and nuanced explanation pp. 147-151. Great reading throughout.
on “Productivity and the Work Week (2000)” ↗I recently read an excellent book on the lives of the extremely poor, Poor Economics, Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo. The authors are development economists at MIT. If you think that poor people don't borrow money you should really read it. Anybody who's secure enough to make it a…
on “How do you make programmers work 60-80 hours per week?” ↗This is the same Banerjee of "Poor Economics"[1] fame. Really fascinating work. [1] https://www.pooreconomics.com/
on “How Postcards Solved the Problem of Disappearing Rice” ↗To anyone interested in the topic, I recommend reading Duflo & Banerjee's 2011 book "Poor Economics". They pioneered the approach of using RCTs to test interventions in fighting poverty (for which they received the Nobel Memorial Prize together with Michael Kremer). They go into a lot of factors as…
on “Why Do People Stay Poor? [pdf]” ↗Toilets can be cheaper than you expect - in some places cultural barriers may be the main problem. Here's an extract from an excellent book called Poor Economics [1]: ----------------- The conventional wisdom is that today, at $20 per household per month, providing piped water and sanitation is too expensive for the budget of most developing countries. The experience…
on “Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research” ↗Sorry I cannot recommend any other book on this topic - nothing else I have read about tackling poverty comes close to Poor Economics. By the way, Esther Duflo (co-author of the book) has a TED talk worth watching: http://www.ted.com/talks/esther_duflo_social_experiments_to_...
on “India is drowning in its own excreta” ↗Poor Economics - Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman The Signal and The Noise - Nate Silver Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely This Time is Different - Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books? I'm bored” ↗…Brave New World, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451 (crime/action) Child 44, The Secret Speech, Agent 6 - Tom Rob Smith -------------------- Economics Capital in the Twenty-First Century - Thomas Piketty Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty - Banerjee, Duflo Why Nations Fail - Robinson -------------------- Economics/Decision making/Psychology Undercover Economist, Freakonomics,…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books? I'm bored” ↗…with very high effective interest rates. Here is quote about poor fruit vendors in Chennai, India, who have an effective interest rate of 4.69% per day (from an excellent book about poverty called 'Poor Economics' [1]) ---------------------------- We have already seen, in the previous chapter, another example of people who had lucrative opportunities to save but did not use them: the fruit vendors from Chennai,…
"Poor Economics" is a good book about that topic, based on field studies of the authors. I found the investigation of economics at those margins very interesting. Most concepts of small business etc as people who have…
on “Why do the poor make poor decisions?” ↗Banerjee and Duflo wrote a great book, Poor Economics, if you're interested in their work on development economics.
on “What randomisation can and cannot do” ↗Tangentially related book recommendation, not about gambling, but about development economics: "Poor Economics" -- by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Economics
on “Gambling Is Not a Retirement Plan” ↗Two books about economic development that I love: Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson Poor Economics by Banerjee and Duflo The first deals with why nations stay poor, the second covers how the poor in the third world live and how to actually help them
on “Ask HN: Which book helped you understand the world?” ↗