WILLIAM EASTERLY COMPARISON

William Easterly Comparison



William Easterly Comparison

Introduction

William Russell Easterly is an American economist, specializing in economic growth and foreign aid. He is a Professor of Economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and Co-Director of NYU's Development Research Institute. He is also a visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. Easterly is an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Growth, and of the Journal of Development Economics.

Discussion

His previous book, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, has been compared to Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty and William Easterly's The White Man's Burden, two influential books, which like Collier's book, discuss the pros and cons of developmental aid to developing countries.

The book suggests that, whereas the majority of the 5-billion people in the "developing world" are getting richer at an unprecedented rate, a group of countries (mostly in Africa and Central Asia but with a smattering elsewhere) are stuck and that development assistance should be focused heavily on them[1]. These countries typically suffer from one or more development traps:

The Conflict Trap - civil wars (with an estimated average cost of $64bn each) or coups.

The Natural Resource Trap - having to rely on natural resources which can stifle other economic activity and lead to bad governance and coups/conflict.

Landlocked with Bad Neighbours - poor landlocked countries with poor neighbours find it almost impossible to tap into world economic growth.

Bad Governance in a Small Country - terrible governance and policies can destroy an economy with alarming speed.

He suggests a number of relatively inexpensive but institutionally difficult changes:

1. Aid agencies should increasingly be concentrated in the most difficult environments, accept more risk. Ordinary citizens should not support poorly informed vociferous lobbies whose efforts are counterproductive and severely constrain what the Aid agencies can do.

2. Appropriate Military Interventions (such as the British in Sierra Leone) should be encouraged, especially to guarantee democratic governments against coups.

3. International Charters are needed to encourage good governance and provide prototypes.

4. Trade Policy needs to encourage free-trade and give preferential access to Bottom Billion exports. At present "Rich-country protectionism masquerades in alliance with antiglobalization romantics and third world crooks"

The book does not include a list of bottom billion countries because Collier believes this might lead to a "self-fulfilling prophecy." However, he states that there are 58 such countries mentioned throughout the book.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It is a 2007 book by Professor Paul Collier exploring the reason why impoverished countries fail to progress despite international aid and support. In the book Collier argues that there are many countries whose residents have experienced little, if any, income growth over the 1980s and 1990s. On his reckoning, there are just under 60 such economies, home to almost 1 billion ...