After Helping the Poor — Don’t Sleep Well (Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences 2019)

Abstract

The article presents three Nobel Prize winners in economic sciences 2019 as well as the results of their researches. The paper highlights the primary goal of the laureates’ research aimed at improving the effectiveness of foreign aid to poor countries. Along with this, the author considered three achievements of the winners noted by the Nobel Committee: randomized field experiments, establishing new links between microeconomics and macroeconomics, the original method of research on the causes of poverty. The winners showed that financial assistance to poor countries should be accompanied, and possibly preceded, by pilot studies of the effectiveness of this assistance. The primary way to improve the efficiency of foreign aid laureates see in creating conditions for self-improvement of their situation by low-income families. And this, according to the laureates, can be achieved through solving the problems of health and education in countries receiving foreign aid. To verify that idea the laureates conducted experiments in Kenya, India, other countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The author also provides evidence that foreign aid to poor countries is less than cash flows going in the opposite direction.