Helping hands; how foreign aid could benefit everybody.(Annals of Economics)

Last summer, the economist William Easterly published a book entitled "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics," in which he described how governments in many poor countries, particularly in Africa, have frittered away large amounts of aid money given to them by rich countries. People have written books critical of aid policy before, but the origin of this one was unusual: its author had spent sixteen years at the World Bank, the Washington-based international agency that runs many of the development programs he was criticizing.

Easterly's book read like the testimony of a Mafia turncoat who knew not only where the ...