Poor Economics

Imagine you have a few billion dollars and want to spend it on the poor. How do you go about it? Billions of government dollars and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world’s poor. But much of their work is based on assumptions about the poor and the world that are untested generalizations at best, harmful misperceptions at worst. Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials (RCTs) in development economics through their award-winning Poverty Action Lab.