Reinventing foreign aid
William Easterly (Editor), Nancy Birdsall
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
x, 567 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
9780262550666, 9780262050906, 0262550660, 0262050900
123349624
Foreword by Nancy Birdsall
Introduction : can't take it anymore? / William Easterly
Making aid work / Abhijit Banerjee and Ruimin He
Use of randomization in the evaluation of development effectiveness / Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer
It pays to be ignorant : a simple political economy of rigorous program evaluation / Lant Pritchett
Solutions when the solution is the problem : arraying the disarray in development / Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock
Donors and service delivery / Ritva Reinikka
The illusion of sustainability / Michael Kremer and Edward Miguel
An aid-institutions paradox? : a review essay on aid dependency and state building in Sub-Saharan Africa / Todd Moss, Gunilla Pettersson, and Nicolas van de Walle
Why do aid agencies exist? / Bertin Martens
Absorption capacity and disbursement constraints / Jakob Svensson
Donor fragmentation / Stephen Knack and Aminur Rahman
The IMF and economic development / James Raymond Vreeland
The knowledge bank / Jonathan Morduch
Debt relief and fiscal sustainability for heavily indebted poor countries / Craig Burnside and Domenico Fanizza
Making vaccines pay / Michael Kremer
Can we build a better mousetrap? Three new institutions designed to improve aid effectiveness / Steven Radelet and Ruth Levine
Competing with central planning : marketplaces for international aid / Dennis Whittle and Mari Kuraishi
Placing enterprise and business thinking at the heart of the war on poverty / Kurt Hoffman
Avoid hubris: and other lessons for reformers / John McMillan
Seven deadly sins: reflections on donor fallings / Nancy Birdsall
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