Economist William Easterly Asks ‘Can Foreign Aid End World Poverty?’

William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University and co-director of its Development Research Institute, will present “Can Foreign Aid End World Poverty?” 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16 in Kirby Hall of Civil Rights room 104.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow the lecture. Refreshments will be provided. Easterly’s lecture is cosponsored by the Policy Studies program, Gladstone T. Whitman ’49 Endowment Fund, and department of economics and business.

The United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and national aid agencies have signed on to an ambitious project called the Millennium Development Goals, in which poverty rates, infant mortality, and other key indicators of low development would be dramatically reduced by 2015. Easterly will address how aid agencies have advocated a program of large aid increases, and how the recent wave of attention to “make poverty history” could be problematic.

Easterly will discuss the debate about how effective past foreign aid has been toward creating economic development and eliminating poverty. He believes that, despite sharply contrasting views on the effectiveness of foreign aid, there is a surprising degree of unanimity that the aid system is deeply flawed and could be much improved.

“Professor Easterly is at the cutting edge, if not leading the way forward, of new thinking on the important issue of how best western industrial countries can contribute to sustained improvements in the well-being and freedoms of people around the world who are afflicted with marginalization and poverty,” says Gladstone Fluney Hutchinson, associate professor of economics and business. “This challenge has proven to be more difficult and daunting than first envisioned. One could interpret Professor Easterly in his new book, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, as blaming, in large part, the West and its key institutions like the IMF and the World Bank for getting the economic development paradigm all wrong with their meddling paternalism in the economic affairs of poor countries. The fact that the West and its institutions bore little accountability for their detrimental actions also comes in for criticism by Professor Easterly.”

Hutchinson is using The White Man’s Burden in his Economic Development course this semester.

“Professor Easterly’s important contribution to our learning environment at Lafayette is clear,” he explains. “Lafayette is heavily invested in helping its students to become engaged and productive world citizens. As such, their exposure to and engagement with the thought-provoking ways Professor Easterly has framed the challenges of development and the failures of the West, will benefit them immensely in their scholarly and intellectual development, and in the cultivation of their humanity.”

Donald Chambers, Walter E. Hanson Professor of Economics and Business, believes the importance of Easterly’s work in exploring how poverty can be addressed effectively, will initiate valuable discussion on the topic.

“Easterly offers a thoughtful approach rather than going with the mainstream and simply recommending that additional resources be poured into the failed policies and programs of the past,” he says.

“The Gladstone T. Whitman Endowment Fund of Lafayette College is providing some of the support because Easterly’s work includes inquiry into the implications of economic liberty,” says Chambers. “Mr. Whitman has been a generous supporter of lively debate regarding economic freedom.”

In addition to The White Man’s Burden, Easterly is author of The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics and coeditor of three more books. His books have been translated into eight languages. He is the author or coauthor of nearly 50 articles in journals such as Economics and Politics, Journal of Policy Reform, and World Development.

Easterly has been a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Global Development since 2003. Prior to joining the faculty at NYU, he spent 16 years as a research economist at the World Bank.

His work has been discussed in media outlets like the Lehrer Newshour, National Public Radio, BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Economist, New Yorker, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, Times of London, Guardian, and Christian Science Monitor. Easterly is associate editor of Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Economic Growth.

His scholarly interests include Africa, economic development and growth, macroeconomics of developing countries, political economy, institutional economics, and foreign aid.

Easterly earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 1985 and a B.A. from Bowling Green State University in 1979.