
Making Aid Work
Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 10. February 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
188 pages
978-0-262-53411-6 (ISBN)
Description
An encouraging account of the potential of foreign aid to reduce poverty and a challenge to all aid organizations to think harder about how they spend their money.With more than a billion people now living on less than a dollar a day, and with eight million dying each year because they are simply too poor to live, most would agree that the problem of global poverty is our greatest moral challenge. The large and pressing practical question is how best to address that challenge. Although millions of dollars flow to poor countries, the results are often disappointing. In Making Aid Work, Abhijit Banerjee-an "aid optimist"-argues that aid has much to contribute, but the lack of analysis about which programs really work causes considerable waste and inefficiency, which in turn fuels unwarranted pessimism about the role of aid in fostering economic development. Banerjee challenges aid donors to do better. Building on the model used to evaluate new drugs before they come on the market, he argues that donors should assess programs with field experiments using randomized trials. In fact, he writes, given the number of such experiments already undertaken, current levels of development assistance could focus entirely on programs with proven records of success in experimental conditions. Responding to his challenge, leaders in the field-including Nicholas Stern, Raymond Offenheiser, Alice Amsden, Ruth Levine, Angus Deaton, and others-question whether randomized trials are the most appropriate way to evaluate success for all programs. They raise broader questions as well, about the importance of aid for economic development and about the kinds of interventions (micro or macro, political or economic) that will lead to real improvements in the lives of poor people around the world. With one in every six people now living in extreme poverty, getting it right is crucial.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 178 mm
Width: 114 mm
Thickness: 14 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-262-53411-6 (9780262534116)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee | Alice H. Amsden | Robert H. Bates
Making Aid Work
Book
03/2007
MIT Press
€16.04
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Persons
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).
Alice H. Amsden was Barton T. Weller Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alice H. Amsden was Barton T. Weller Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Author
Ford Foundation Professor of EconomicsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Co-Author
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University Professor; Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign RelationsColumbia University
Princeton University
Lord Stern of BrentfordLondon School of Economics