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Home  >  Calendar  >  Standard lectures

The Dark Side of Development: Corruption, Poverty and the Economic Gangster

Event Date

  • 10/21/2008   6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
    Please arrive early for registration

Location

  • World Affairs Council Auditorium

Address

  • 312 Sutter Street
    Second Floor
    San Francisco, California 94108
Speaker(s)
Mr. Edward Miguel, University of California at Berkeley

Edward Miguel is Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Center of Evaluations for Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 2000. Born in New York City and raised in New Jersey, he earned S.B. degrees in both Economics and Mathematics from MIT, and received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. Ted’s main research focus is African economic development, including work on the economic causes and consequences of violence; the impact of ethnic divisions on local collective action; and interactions between health, education, and productivity for the poor. He has conducted field work in Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and India. Ted is a Faculty Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Associate Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Development Economics and Review of Economics and Statistics, recipient of the 2005 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and winner of the 2005 Kenneth J. Arrow Prize awarded annually by the International Health Economics Association for the Best Paper in Health Economics. Economic Gangsters is his first book.

 

Event Details

All too often foreign aid money falls into the wrong hands—corrupt government officials, rebel leaders and black marketeers steal well-intentioned funds to advance their own interests to the detriment of society. Such perpetrators are what Edward Miguel refers to as “economic gangsters” and they flourish where legal institutions are weak and people are most in need. Edward Miguel joins the Council to discuss his recommendations for a new system of emergency aid for countries suffering from corruption and poverty, and to trace the critical links between economic gangsters and such issues as climate change and civil war.

This event is co-sponsored by Net Impact.

Listen to the program audio file or visit our online archive for other event recordings.