Lessons for the world in China's war on poverty
When it was announced in October that Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer had won the 2019 Nobel Prize in economics for their experimental work in alleviating global poverty, I eagerly turned to reading their works, hoping to glean policy recommendations about steps governments should take.
However, I must say I have been disappointed so far in this search for implementable policy guidance. Although China has had the most success in reducing poverty, the institutions and government programs that made this possible have, in my view, not been properly considered by international poverty scholars.
China's investments in building infrastructure even in remote areas may appear uneconomic to outsiders, but it has been an essential way of providing opportunities to hundreds of millions of people.
