Reinventing Foreign Aid - Hardcover

Easterly, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262050900 ISBN 13: 9780262050906

Publisher: MIT Press, 2008

Synopsis

Top experts in the field discuss how to improve the effectiveness of foreign aid, proposing practical solutions to specific problems rather than a utopian master plan.The urgency of reducing poverty in the developing world has been the subject of a public campaign by such unlikely policy experts as George Clooney, Alicia Keyes, Elton John, Angelina Jolie, and Bono. And yet accompanying the call for more foreign aid is an almost universal discontent with the effectiveness of the existing aid system. In "Reinventing Foreign Aid", development expert William Easterly has gathered top scholars in the field to discuss how to improve foreign aid. These authors, Easterly points out, are not claiming that their ideas will (to invoke a current slogan) Make Poverty History. Rather, they take on specific problems and propose some hard-headed solutions.Easterly himself, in an expansive and impassioned introductory chapter, makes a case for the "searchers" - who explore solutions by trial and error and learn from feedback - over the "planners" - who throw an endless supply of resources at a big goal - as the most likely to reduce poverty. Other writers look at scientific evaluation of aid projects (including randomized trials) and describe projects found to be cost-effective, including vaccine delivery and HIV education; consider how to deal with the government of the recipient state (work through it or bypass a possibly dysfunctional government?); examine the roles of the International Monetary Fund (a de-facto aid provider) and the World Bank; and analyze some new and innovative proposals for distributing aid.

About this title

Review

"Enhancing aid effectiveness requires a holistic approach. This outstanding book provides rich food for thought, with expert contributions spanning the range from evaluation to institutional design and new approaches in providing aid. A must-read for all scholars and practitioners interested in making aid work."--Holger Wolf, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

About the Author

William Easterly is the author of The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT Press, 2001) and The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. He is Professor of Economics at New York University (Joint with Africa House), Codirector of NYU's Development Research Institute, visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Nonresident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0262050900
• ISBN 13: 9780262050906
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 624