Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

William Easterly, a New York University economics professor who previously worked at the World Bank, divides the international development aid community into two groups: there are planners, who have grandiose large-scale utiopian plans for ending poverty, and there are searchers, who favor piecemeal interventions by finding things that actually work. Planners have good intentions but don't motivate anyone to carry out their plan or hold anyone responsible for getting results. Searchers, on the other hand, find out first what the poor need then try to meet the demand. Easterly has special contempt for aging rock stars such as Bono and Bob Geldof for soliciting money for large anti-poverty programs, but he gets apoplectic when he talks about Jeffrey Sachs' book "The End of Poverty" - which he gave a scathing review in the Washington Post. Easterly does not believe that ending poverty is a valid policy goal. He says its like mandating that a cow should win the Kentucky Derby. Anger brings out some strange analogies. Sachs represents everything that Easterly thinks is wrong with the development community. To drive home the point, Easterly argues how "the West spent $2.3 trillion in foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get 12 cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths." Easterly likes repeating the $2.3 trillion to emphasize how the West keeps spending and getting very meager results. Let me add one of my own: the US has incurred $2.3 trillion worth of new debt in the last five years with very little to show for it. The question is: does this spending do good or ill? What would Africa and the rest of the developing world look like if this money had not been spent? Would they be prosperous and democratic? Easterly fails to explain why aid has done "so much ill." It is pretty obvious that many of the grand development schemes of the planners have failed, but it is not obvious that these societies would have been better off without aid. The critique of large-scale planning made in the West may appeal, at first glance, to free traders who call for market solutions to solve the problems associated with poverty. However, he is also critical of those who attempt to "plan" markets. (Think of Sachs' "big bang" market schemes for Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall.) His years at the World Bank have made him very cynical about imposing "Washington Consensus" on other countries. The approach favored by Easterly is to examine each culture individually and offer aid specific to local conditions. Sounds good. He offers many case studies that are very compelling, yet it is difficult to draw many conclusions because they are specific to each situation. Many of his case studies showed that aid administered actually helped rather than hindered development. One of the conclusions drawn, however, is that healthcare and primary education are two areas where aid has been successful. In the end, Easterly and Sachs have more in common than Easterly would like to acknowledge. They both believe that it is important for the West to give aid to the rest, and that it is important that those providing aid get results and be held accountable. Where they differ is that Easterly adamantly believes that the large scale planning administered by organizations such as the UN and the World Bank will never reach the people that need it. He might be right. This book is an important contribution to reforming the development community.