Poor Economics, by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, has won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs’ Business Book of the Year award. The book deals with “radical new ways of tackling global poverty.”
This reminded me of a paper my friend George and I had written some years back. An excerpt from the paper (you can download the entire paper here),
We believe that poverty, hunger and malnutrition in the global economy can be eliminated without any aid. The commodification of development, through the creation of an incentive structure, which results in a self regulating market where every market participant gains, is the essence of our idea. There is no philanthropy involved.
There are several multilateral, bilateral and unilateral organizations working towards eradicating poverty. Billions of aid money has been disbursed for this purpose. Yet, the problem of poverty remains huge.
Maybe its time to do things differently.
I shall give the paper a good read one of these days….good old MSE days….I am lost in nostalgia after that video!
By: shishir on January 23, 2012
at 10:24 pm
ha ha.. i can imagine.. we need to make a trip to our alma mater sometime..
By: Ravi Saraogi on January 24, 2012
at 9:19 am