When future histories are written about the next billion people lifted from poverty, prominent among the heroes will be William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-Director of the NYU Development Research Initiative. He compellingly demonstrates that poverty is about a shortage of local economic and political rights. Easterly’s extensive field research, studies, and books, have upended the tragically failed clichés of economic development and revolutionized the field. The New York Times described his latest book, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor, as “bracingly iconoclastic.” 

Please join us for a lunch discussion on today’s greatest development challenges with William Easterly, a giant in development economics and the 2021 recipient of CEI’s Julian L. Simon Memorial Award.

When: Tuesday, May 17th, 12:30 pm EDT

Where: Union League Club

Host: CEI Chairman Jean Claude Gruffat

This is a private event. Questions? Email [email protected].

William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-Director of the NYU Development Research Institute, which won the 2009 BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge in Development Cooperation Award. He is the author of three books: The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor; The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, which won the F.A. Hayek Award from the Manhattan Institute; and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. He was the 2021 winner of CEI’s Julian L. Simon Memorial Award.

He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed academic articles and has written columns and reviews for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, and New York Review of Books. He has served as Co-Editor of the Journal of Development Economics and as Director of the blog Aid Watch. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and senior fellow at BREAD. Foreign Policy magazine named him among the Top 100 Global Public Intellectuals in 2008 and 2009 and Thomson Reuters listed him as one of Highly Cited Researchers of 2014. He is also the 11th most famous native of Bowling Green, Ohio.

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