ADB Distinguished Speakers Program: William Easterly

Events

ADB Distinguished Speakers Program: William Easterly

18 January 2006
Manila
Philippines

 

Only for the recipients of foreign aid is something akin to central planning seen as a way to achieve prosperity. In this presentation, Professor William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University, explained that the end of poverty is achieved with free markets and democracy—where decentralized “searchers” look for ways to meet individual needs—not Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and that PRSPs and MDGs create lots of bureaucracy but hold no one specific agency in foreign aid accountable for any one specific task. He asserts that planners in foreign aid use the old failed models of the past—the “Financing Gap”, the “poverty trap”, the government-to-government aid model; and the “expenditures = outcomes” mentality, and that searchers in foreign aid would imitate the feedback and accountability of markets and democracy to provide goods and services to individuals until homegrown markets and democracy end poverty in the society as a whole. He also cited as an example of a more promising “searchers” approach in foreign aid is the 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammad Yunus and Grameen Bank.

Program and Learning Materials: 
Date Session / Activity Presentation Material Speaker(s)
18 Jan 2006 Presentation Planners vs. Searchers in Foreign Aid
Only for the recipients of foreign aid is something akin to central planning seen as a way to achieve prosperity. In this presentation, Professor William...
William Easterly

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