International Development Speaker Series Invitation | view in browser

RAND International Development Speaker Series

The Tyranny of Experts:
Economists, Dictators, and the
Forgotten Rights of the Poor

William Easterly
Professor of Economics at New York University,
Co-Director of the NYU Development Research Institute

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

12:00 - 1:30 p.m.

 

 
William Easterly

RAND Corporation
1776 Main St. • Santa Monica, CA
Conference room 1226

 

Audioconference:
Washington conference room 4304
Pittsburgh conference room 4318

Webmeeting address: https://webmeetingext.rand.org/idssmeeting
Call in number: 1-800-747-5150 (passcode: 3269008#)

 

About the Program

Global poverty has largely been viewed as a technical problem that merely requires the right expert solutions. Yet all too often, experts recommend solutions that fix immediate problems while ignoring the political oppression that created them in the first place, accidentally colluding with autocrats who violate the rights of the poor.

William Easterly will discuss the findings of his book, The Tyranny of Experts, which traces the history of the fight against global poverty, showing how development has long suppressed the vital debate on the individual rights of people in developing countries, the crucial debate on whether unchecked power for dictators is the problem and not the solution.

About the Speaker

William Easterly is professor of economics at New York University and co-director of the NYU Development Research Institute, which won the 2009 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge in Development Cooperation Award. He is the author of three books: The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (March 2014), The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Harm and So Little Good (2006), which won the FA Hayek Award from the Manhattan Institute, and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001). He has also published more than 60 peer-reviewed academic articles, and ranks among the top 100 most cited economists worldwide.

Easterly has written columns and reviews for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Review of Books, and Washington Post. He has served as co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics and as director of the blog Aid Watch. He is a research associate of NBER, senior fellow at BREAD, and nonresident senior fellow at Brookings. Foreign Policy magazine named him among the Top 100 Global Public Intellectuals in 2008 and 2009. He is also the 11th most famous native of Bowling Green, Ohio.

Learn More

If you would like to schedule a meeting with Dr. Easterly, contact Caroline Tassot, ctassot@prgs.edu.

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