The classic narrative of economic development - poor countries are caught in poverty traps, out of which they need a Big Push involving increased aid and investment, leading to a takeoff in per capita income - has been very influential in development economics since the 1950s. This was the...

The classic narrative of economic development - poor countries are caught in poverty traps, out of which they need a Big Push involving increased aid and investment, leading to a takeoff in per capita income - has been very influential in development economics since the 1950s. This was the...

The international effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 has given fresh prominence to the idea of poverty traps, a notion that was widely current in the 1950s. This idea, most actively promoted by economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and...

Over the last century, 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 without addressing the systemic political factors that created them in the first...

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface to the Paperback Edition -- Prologue: The Quest -- I - Why Growth Matters -- 1 - To Help the Poor -- Intermezzo: In Search of a River -- II - Panaceas That Failed -- 2 - Aid for Investment -- Intermezzo: Parmila -- 3 - Solow's Surprise: Investment...