Good Economics for Hard Times : Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems by Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee

Good Economics for Hard Times : Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems a Book by Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems is a 2019 nonfiction book by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, both professors of economics at MIT. It was published on November 12, 2019 by PublicAffairs (US), Juggernaut Books (India), and Allen Lane (UK). The book draws from recent developments in economics research to argue solutions to the issues facing modern economies and societies around the world, including slowing economic growth, immigration, income inequality, climate change, globalization and technological unemployment. It is their second collaborative book since the publication of their book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011) and their first since becoming a married couple in 2015. The book's publication comes a month after Banerjee and Duflo were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, shared with Harvard University professor Michael Kremer..Banerjee and Duflo draw from recent developments in economics research to argue solutions to the issues facing modern economies and societies around the world, including slowing economic growth, immigration, income inequality, climate change, globalization and technological unemployment. The book argues against the idea that immigrants lower wages and take jobs from native workers. They also argue that people in poverty often make more sound financial decisions than is normally attributed to them.

Editor Review:

• Winner of the getAbstract International Book Award―getAbstract
• "Excellent...Few have grappled as energetically with the complexity of real life as Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, or got their boots as dirty in the process...A treasure trove of insight...[Readers] will be captivated by the authors' curiosity, ferocious intellects and attractive modesty."―The Economist
• "Carefully argued and backed with research...Good Economics is an effective response to Banerjee and Duflo's more thoughtful critics, some of whom argued that devotion to randomised trials had led to a narrowing of economics, in which complex questions that could not be scientifically tested should simply be set aside. The authors make a convincing case that empirical economics contains answers to many vexing problems, from populism to identity politics, especially when economists are willing to range outside their discipline's confines."―Financial Times
• "'Good Economics for Hard Times' lives up to its authors' reputations, giving a masterly tour of the current evidence on critical policy questions facing less-than-perfect markets in both developed and developing countries, from migration to trade to postindustrial blight." ―Wall Street Journal
• "Their goal is to ground both sides of our national debate in hard evidence, and the process of coming up with ways to do that is pretty interesting in itself... Eager to distance themselves from the previous generation of economists who argued from first principles, Banerjee and Duflo say nothing that smells like special pleading. It would be hard to take umbrage with such studied humility. The authors admit, 'We clearly don't have all the solutions, and suspect no one else does either.' Even so, the prospect of a path towards consensus solutions through iterated experiments is enough to make for a compelling read."―National Review
• "The studies they cite probe hot topics such as climate change, immigration and the viability of continued economic growth. Banerjee and Duflo synthesize the literature on what is agreed and what is controversial in an accessible, often entertaining way." ―Nature
• "Good Economics for Hard Times makes important policy connections and suggestions... Banerjee and Duflo explore traditional remedies (tariffs sure aren't the answer, they find, and job retraining and other trade adjustment tools are too narrow and take too long) and suggest some novel ideas... In crafting their carefully reasoned arguments, they marshal evidence assembled over decades from all sorts of areas-the fight against malaria, past efforts at tax reform, previous waves of migration-and propose commonsense solutions."―Foreign Policy

About Author:

Abhijit V. Banerjee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2019, is the Ford Foundation International Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Esther Duflo, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics 2019, is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.