Fighting Poverty through Good Governance using Randomized Experiments

摘要

As the two authors (both of whom are at the economics department of MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) assert early on in the book, Poor Economics is different from Economics of Poverty. Arising from the research conducted by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, this book is mainly about how, in several countries across the world, the 'very poor' think, live and cope with the various economic needs and risks that they face in their everyday lives. This study has not been conducted for its own sake, but to teach policy makers in government, civil society organizations like NGOs, economists, and corporate groups to effectively address the problems and risks of the poor through designing the right policies. The right policies, according to the authors, are not to be determined through grand theorizing about institutions, or through sterile ideological debates that economists have been engaging in or by blaming powerful groups in a society, but by understanding how the poor behave.