Bill Easterly is a funny man, quite subtle, but what a perfect foil for development panaceas. Here he skewers a $4m World Bank study:
The report of the World Bank Growth Commission, led by Nobel laureate Michael Spence, was published last week. After two years of work by the commission of 21 world leaders and experts, an 11- member working group, 300 academic experts, 12 workshops, 13 consultations, and a budget of $4m, the experts’ answer to the question of how to attain high growth was roughly: we do not know, but trust experts to figure it out.
I have not digested the full report myself, and I will almost surely find more to like in it than Easterly. But I wouldn't recommend anyone read the study without getting their skeptical thinking caps on first, and what better way than starting with Easterly's preface? (FYI, if you can read only one book on international development, it should be Easterly's "Elusive Quest")
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