Bill Easterly’s
[amazon_image id=”0465031250″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0385525818″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty[/amazon_image]
This is obviously far from a universal view, or Easterly and Munk would not have written their books. However, a number of the OECD economists I was lunching with on Friday were discussing exactly this subject. One said that he thought the RCTs approached, as so brilliantly described in Duflo and Bannerjee’s
[amazon_image id=”1586487981″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty[/amazon_image]
As well as the methodology question, though, there is the tendency so widespread among economists to assume away the importance of historical and geographic specificities. One of the reasons I so loved Jeremy Adelman’s biography of Albert Hirschman,
The reductive turn in economics that dominated our subject from the 1970s to the 2000s is tenacious, but it seems to be on the retreat. Development economics is one of the straws in the wind. Perhaps I’m overoptimistic, but I do think economics is returning to the real world from its surreal Wonderland.
[amazon_image id=”1853260029″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Alice in Wonderland (Wordsworth Classics)[/amazon_image]
Economists out to lunch?
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