What Can Foreign Aid Do For the World’s Poor?

When Angelina Jolie appears on MTV trekking across Africa with a world-famous devlopment economist and Bono makes it to the cover of Time for his work on behalf of the world’s poor, you can be sure that the issue of world poverty isn’t just for wonks any more. Wealthy citizens of wealthy countries seem to increasingly recognize the gulf between them and the rest of the world. But what, if anything, can the wealthy people of the world do that will really help? Billions upon billions have been spent by governments and institutions like the World Bank over the last half-century to launch less developed countries onto a trajectory of growth. Yet despite all this money—or perhaps because of it—many countries continue to languish in abject poverty. Do we need to spend even more, faster? Or have development efforts misunderstood the deeper causes of growth? How important are political and social institutions to the effectiveness of aid? And how important are intangibles like culture, belief systems, and human capital? Are there underappreciated opportunities for aid that we should hear from Ms. Jolie’s bee-stung lips and that Bono ought to be singing from the rooftops?

William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University and former World Bank economist, will kick off the conversation with an essay based on his new book, White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. Branko Milanovic of the World Bank, Deepak Lal, Jules S. Coleman Professor of Economics at UCLA, and Steve Radelet, Senior Fellow of the Center for Global Development, will round out the conversation with their expert comments.

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