Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. BanerjeeMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
An interesting and engaging take on the economics of poverty, drawing from data to draw small but consequential conclusions. Banerjee and Duflo refuse to sacrifice nuance while still building an accessible set of ideas about how poverty works.
The book does a great job of introducing novel ideas, providing surprising facts, and using real-world anecdotes to generate towards interesting conclusions and policy suggestions. It is at its best when it uses the statistics to make largely descriptive claims about how people in different countries behave, and it is fascinating.
There is a tendency to overgenerate, such as using laboratory experiments to make broad claims about human behaviour in contexts where such claims should not as easily be made. However, these are few and far between.
Overall, an informative and interesting book.
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