Karlan and Appel have contributed greatly to international development scholarship with this book. They advocate that development programs must 1) robustly evaluate their effectiveness through randomized control trials, and 2) take into account people's irrational (non-economic) behavioral choices. They provide overviews of various programs designed to help improve the lives of the most underserved in developing countries, whether it was to increase purchasing power, improve school attendance, increase access to medical treatment, prevent disease, or encourage cessation of a negative behavior. Throughout the analysis of all the various programs, one thing was clear: there was no silver bullet for international development programs. What works in one area or sector may not work in another. I found the entire book fascinating. Given limited funds and resources available, it is in organizations working in the developing world's best interest to implement programs that they know are effective, and give the most return for the investment. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in international development work.

My only complaint was that I was mildly irritated by the conceit that the entire book be written in Karlan's point of view, supposedly to avoid confusion on the part of the reader. My thought is that a reader of an international development economics book is sophisticated enough to deal with multiple points of view and multiple authors. There have been plenty of multi-author non-fiction books where the book was written in the third person or each author wrote entire chapters in the first person but clearly marked who wrote what.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Goodreads First Reads program. ( )

How a new economics is helping to solve global poverty.

Applaud the methodology and the approach, but this is essentially the same ground covered by the superior 'Poor Economics'. ( )

Excellent book which discusses the nature of charity and poverty, and which programs work best. People do not always act in their most rational interests, and poverty restricts their options even further. The author has done a lot of research and investigation into which programs are the most beneficial, and offers several extremely promising programs in addition to thoroughly detailing the theory behind them. An excellent book. ( )