William Easterly Quotes

#1. The rich have markets, the poor have bureaucrats.

William Easterly

#2. Economists did something even better than predict the crisis. We correctly predicted that we would not be able to predict it.

William Easterly

#3. Money should not be spent according to what the West considers the most dramatic kind of suffering.

William Easterly

#4. If there is one number to which the rights of millions will be happily sacrificed, it is the national GDP growth rate.

William Easterly

#5. Any factor that breeds polarization will worsen policy, and thus cause lower growth.

William Easterly

#6. We need a revolution in development thinking and practice. Foreign aid, debt relief, family planning, democracy, education, and free markets have not succeeded.

William Easterly

#7. Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.

William Easterly

#8. To escape the cycle of tragedy, we (searchers) have to be tough on the ideas of the planners, even while we salute their goodwill.

William Easterly

#9. When you are in a hole, the top priority is to stop digging.

William Easterly