More Than Good Intentions

A leading economist and researcher report from the front lines
of a revolution in solving the world's most persistent problem.

When it comes to global poverty, people are passionate and polarized. At one
extreme: We just need to invest more resources. At the other: We've thrown
billions down a sinkhole over the last fifty years and accomplished almost
nothing.

Dean Karlan and Jacob Appel present an entirely new approach that blazes an
optimistic and realistic trail between these two extremes.
In this pioneering book Karlan and Appel combine behavioral economics
with worldwide field research. They take readers with them into villages across
Africa, India, South America, and the Philippines, where economic theory
collides with real life. They show how small changes in banking, insurance,
health care, and other development initiatives that take into account human
irrationality can drastically improve the well-being of poor people everywhere.
We in the developed world have found ways to make our own lives
profoundly better. We use new tools to spend smarter, save more, eat better,
and lead lives more like the ones we imagine. These tools can do the same
for the impoverished. Karlan and Appel's research, and those of some close
colleagues, show exactly how.

In America alone, individual donors contribute over two hundred billion
to charity annually, three times as much as corporations, foundations, and
bequests combined. This book provides a new way to understand what really
works to reduce poverty; in so doing, it reveals how to better invest those
billions and begin transforming the well-being of the world.

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