Reinventing Foreign Aid

by Easterly, William R.

• ISBN13: 9780262550666
• ISBN10: 0262550660
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-05-09
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

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. Contributors: Abhijit Banerjee, Nancy Birdsall, Craig Burnside, Esther Duflo, Domenico Fanizza, William Easterly, Ruimin He, Kurt Hoffman, Stephen Knack, Michael Kremer, Mari Kuraishi, Ruth Levine, Bertin Martens, John McMillan, Edward Miguel, Jonathan Morduch, Todd Moss, Gunilla Pettersson, Lant Pritchett, Steven Radelet, Aminur Rahman, Ritva Reinikka, Jakob Svensson, Nicolas van de Walle, James Vreeland, Dennis Whittle, Michael Woolcock.

Author Biography

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.

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.

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee is the Ford Foundation Professor of Economics in the department of economics at MIT, a director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT, and a past president of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD).

Michael is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Michael is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Edward Miguel, coauthor with Raymond Fisman of Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations, is Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Center of Evalulations for Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jonathan Morduch is Professor of Public Policy and Economics at New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He is the coauthor of The Economics of Microfinance (MIT Press) and Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day.

Michael is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Introduction: Can't Take It Anymore?	p. 1
The Power of Scientific Evaluation-And Why Isn't It Done More Often?	p. 45
Making Aid Work	p. 47
Use of Randomization in the Evaluation of Development Effectiveness	p. 93
It Pays to Be Ignorant	p. 121
A Simple Political Economy of Rigorous Program Evaluation
The Problems of Aid-Financed Delivery of Public Services	p. 145
The Gordian Knot of the State
Solutions When the Solution Is the Problem	p. 147
Arraying the Disarray in Development
Donors and Service Delivery	p. 179
The Illusion of Sustainability	p. 201
An Aid-Institutions Paradox?	p. 255
A Review Essay on Aid Dependency and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa
Dysfunctional Donors and How to Reform Them	p. 283
Why Do Aid Agencies Exist?	p. 285
Absorption Capacity and Disbursement Constraints	p. 311
Donor Fragmentation	p. 333
The Imf and World Bank	p. 349
The IMF and Economic Development	p. 351
The Knowledge Bank	p. 377
Debt Relief and Fiscal Sustainability for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries	p. 399
Imagining New Forms of Foreign Aid	p. 415
Making Vaccines Pay	p. 417
Can We Build a Better Mousetrap?	p. 431
Three New Institutions Designed to Improve Aid Effectiveness
In Conclusion: The Big Picture	p. 503
Avoid Hubris: And Other Lessons for Reformers	p. 505
Seven Deadly Sins: Reflections on Donor Failings	p. 515
Contributors	p. 553
Index	p. 555
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