Poverty and development can sometimes feel like overwhelming issues – the scale is daunting, the problems grand. Ideology drives a lot of policies, and even the most well-intentioned ideas can get bogged down by ignorance of ground-level realities and inertia at the level of the implementer.
Poverty and development can sometimes feel like overwhelming issues – the scale is daunting, the problems grand. Ideology drives a lot of policies, and even the most well-intentioned ideas can get bogged down by ignorance of ground-level realities and inertia at the level of the implementer. In fact, we call these the “three I’s” – ideology, ignorance, inertia – the three main reasons policies may not work and aid is not always effective.
But there’s no reason to lose hope. Incremental, real change can be made. Sometimes the change seems small, but by identifying real world success stories, facing up to real world failures, and understanding why the poor make the choices they make, we can find the right levers to push to free the poor of the hidden traps that keep them behind.
Prof. Duflo presents our take on the way in which we must rethink our approach to development economics. What are the low-hanging fruit of development? How can we maximize our impact in poverty alleviation? This lecture was presented during the panel session, The Evolution of Economic Science: Macroeconomics, Growth and Development, during the MIT 150-year anniversary symposium.
Poverty and development can sometimes feel like overwhelming issues – the scale is daunting, the problems grand. Ideology drives a lot of policies, and even the most well-intentioned ideas can get bogged down by ignorance of ground-level realities and inertia at the level of the implementer. In fact, we call these the “three I’s” – ideology, ignorance, inertia – the three main reasons policies may not work and aid is not always effective.
But there’s no reason to lose hope. Incremental, real change can be made. Sometimes the change seems small, but by identifying real world success stories, facing up to real world failures, and understanding why the poor make the choices they make, we can find the right levers to push to free the poor of the hidden traps that keep them behind.
Prof. Duflo presents our take on the way in which we must rethink our approach to development economics. What are the low-hanging fruit of development? How can we maximize our impact in poverty alleviation? This lecture was presented during the panel session, The Evolution of Economic Science: Macroeconomics, Growth and Development, during the MIT 150-year anniversary symposium.