Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty & The Ways to End It

Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Random House India,

320 pages, R499

Imagine you have a few million dollars. You want to spend it on the poor. How do you go about it? Billions of government dollars and thousands of charitable organisations and NGOs are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of their work is based on untested generalisations. The authors argue that by using randomised control trials and paying careful attention to the evidence, it is possible to make accurate—and often startling assessments—on what really impacts the poor.