{"id":4684,"date":"2011-11-16T05:00:19","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T10:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/?p=4684"},"modified":"2011-11-13T18:48:25","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T23:48:25","slug":"banerjee-and-duflos-poor-economics-business-book-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/4684","title":{"rendered":"Banerjee and Duflo&#8217;s &#8220;Poor Economics&#8221;: Business Book of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo&#8217;s <em>Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty<\/em> has won the Best Business Book of the Year prize awarded by the <em>Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0(FT) and Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n<p>From the <em>Financial Times<\/em> <a title=\"&quot;Poor Economics&quot; Takes Business Book Prize\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/a8af73e6-0623-11e1-a079-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1dd2fCPO8\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> announcing the prize:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Of the six shortlisted finalists,\u00a0<em>Poor Economics<\/em>\u00a0had &#8220;the potential for the greatest impact,&#8221; said one of the judges, Vindi Banga, a former Unilever executive, now a partner with private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier &amp; Rice. Mario Monti, economics professor and former European commissioner, said it was &#8220;highly relevant&#8221; for a world &#8220;where the problems of inequality are becoming overriding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>(Note: Yes, this is the same Mario Monti who is going to be <a title=\"Mario Monti Tapped to Lead Italy Out of Debt Crisis\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/11\/14\/world\/europe\/mario-monti-asked-to-form-a-new-government-in-italy.html\" target=\"_blank\">Silvio Berlusconi&#8217;s successor as prime minister of Italy<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Ever since I joined Duke in 2006, I have taught my development seminar without a textbook. <a title=\"Bardhan and Udry (1999)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Development-Microeconomics-Pranab-Bardhan\/dp\/0198773714\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1321227952&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Bardhan and Udry&#8217;s (1999)<\/a> textbook is too mathematical and not empirical enough for public policy students, and easier textbooks such as <a title=\"Todaro and Smith (2011)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Economic-Development-11th-Pearson-Economics\/dp\/0138013888\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1321227973&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">Todaro and Smith<\/a>&#8216;s are too macro and not applied enough for the seminar I teach.<\/p>\n<p>As such, <em>Poor Economics<\/em>\u00a0is the answer to my prayers.\u00a0I have been using\u00a0in my development seminar this semester as &#8220;lighter&#8221; reading material to supplement the more technical readings (i.e., journal articles), and the book really makes some of the concepts discussed in lecture come alive. I am planning on using it again next year.<\/p>\n<p>If you have not yet read <em>Poor Economics<\/em>, do yourself a favor and read it as soon as possible. Even aid workers and academics doing research in development can learn new, important things from reading it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo&#8217;s Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty has won the Best Business Book of the&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/4684\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Banerjee and Duflo&#8217;s &#8220;Poor Economics&#8221;: Business Book of the Year<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,16,55,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-development","category-economics","category-policy","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gPg8-1dy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4684"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4690,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4684\/revisions\/4690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcfbellemare.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}