Recent influential studies among development economists claim that aid to developing countries is not nearly as beneficial to recipient nations as had been expected. Are these statistical analyses right? One problem is that total aid, on which most studies are based, includes two distinct kinds...

The World Bank recently revised its poverty threshold upward by 25 percent. The new definition of being poor is now anyone who lives on the equivalent of what $1.25 a day buys in the United States, up from a mere dollar. But that adds some 400 million people to the poverty rolls in the world....

The authors, specialists in development, argue that what they call dirigismeâan a priori set of requirements for economic developmentâhas led to the preeminence of the strong and the exclusion of the weak. They advocate a learning-centered approach to development, which in turn emphasizes the...

History shows that austerity does not work when economies are weakening. Some influential studies argue otherwise. These two writers show that the leading such study does not prove the point. If anything, the data show the very opposite. Do not try to cut deficits in recession or weak recovery.