DEVELOPING TIMES: Easterly vs Sachs

Welcome

Mission Statement
Rural Empowerment Initiatives (REI) mission is to collaborate in the reduction of poverty through investment in rural areas and training of local people.

Vision Statement
REI's vision is to treat every created being with dignity, respect and love. We strive to work with those most in need by empowering people to recognize their God given talents, enabling them to make the world a better place and providing them hope for the future.

Our Principles
REI believes that all people are created equal.
REI will develop small to medium businesses (SMEs) as one approach to reach those most in need by creating jobs that build the economy in rural areas.
REI's partner businesses will be led, managed and majority owned by local people.
REI will always seek a triple bottom line of economic, spiritual and social transformation.
REI seeks to build sustainable community-oriented business models.
REI's focus of support is to the economically disadvantaged.
REI will seek attractive market and growth opportunities.
REI will incubate pilot projects with capable management.
REI believes in collaboration. We seek partners whose strengths complement our own in an effort to build well-rounded projects of lasting economic value for the communities in which we work.
REI is inspired by the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and is therefore rooted in the Christian faith.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Easterly vs Sachs

I've been reading both of these books...White Man's Burden and End of Poverty.
I recommend them both.
Here's some debate between the two. When I'm done, I will give my two cents worth and would love your feedback as well.

Does Foreign Aid Work?
by Lars Christian Smith

As Paul Theroux said about listening to Paul Hewson - who calls himself “Bono” -
There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can’t think of one at the moment.

The foreign aid debate brings out strong opinions. In one corner we have Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time), an academic with a Bono-like knack for self-promotion who thinks that aid works, and in the other, William Easterley (The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good), a former World Bank aid professional who thinks it doesn’t.

Here is Easterly’s review of Sachs, “Sachs’ proposed Big Push should set off alarm bells about the dangers of hubris in economics.”

Here is Sachs’ review of Easterly (in The Lancet, of all places), “…the path to success will not be found in Easterly’s unhelpful volume.”

Here is Easterly’s response to Sachs, “Unlike Sachs, however, I believe that fixing the economics of aid is necessary for the goods to reach the poor.”

One interesting author is not mentioned. It is Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at University of Cambridge (Kicking Away the Ladder: Policies and Institutions for Economic Development in Historical Perspective). Chang argues against free market fundamentalism, practically all currently industrialized nations used pervasive state intervention in their periods of industrialization. The “Washington Consensus” policies are designed not to help poor countries develop into modern economies but to lock in the advantages of the present industrial leaders.

Update: this article by William Easterly with advice to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, 4 Ways To Spend $60 Billion Wisely.