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How long does it take to read Poor Economics?

A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty

Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo

Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo takes about 5 hours 52 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 52 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2011. 320 pages, about 88,000 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 47 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 52 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 40 minutes

The page count is the median across 10 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

"Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of the work they do is based on assumptions that are untested generalizations at best, flat out harmful misperceptions at worst. Banerjee and Duflo have pioneered the use of randomized control trials in development economics. Work based on these principles, supervised by the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, is being carried out in dozens of countries. Their work transforms certain presumptions: that microfinance is a cure-all, that schooling equals learning, that poverty at the level of 99 cents a day is just a more extreme version of the experience any of us have when our income falls uncomfortably low. Throughout, the authors emphasize that life for the poor is simply not like life for everyone else: it is a much more perilous adventure, denied many of the cushions and advantages that are routinely provided to the more affluent"--

Subjects: Economic assistance, Poverty, Prevention, Economics, International Cooperation, Developing Countries

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