Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'Esther Duflo'

A Nobel for a technocratic approach to poverty

In this week’s Acton Commentary, Victor Claar looks at the work of the three economists awarded the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences. Claar, associate professor of economics at Florida Gulf Coast University and an Acton affiliate scholar, says “economists are quite divided on this year’s prize” given to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. Continue Reading...

ResearchLinks – 09.28.12

Article: “Big Questions and Poor Economics” James Tooley. “Big Questions and Poor Economics: Banerjee and Duflo on Schooling in Developing Countries.” Econ Journal Watch 9, no. 3 (September 2012): 170-185. In Poor Economics, MIT professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo set out their solutions for global poverty. Continue Reading...

Are slums ever good?

It doesn’t seem that anyone would WANT to live in a slum. But that is not necessarily true, according to Charles Kenny of Foreign Policy. In fact, for many of the world’s poor, a slum can offer opportunities and services not available in rural areas.  Across the world today, thanks to vaccines and underground sewage systems, average life expectancies in big cities are considerably higher than those in the countryside; in sub-Saharan Africa, cities with a population over 1 million have had infant mortality rates one-third lower than those in rural areas. Continue Reading...