ult, the award went to Paul Krugman. It was suggested that Krugman’s high-profile criticism of George W. Bush may have aided his victory, but the prize committee denied that politics had had any influence on their choice of recipient.
3. William R. Easterly
Professor William Easterly, a former World Bank economist and senior advisor, has attempted to debunk conventional ideas about foreign aid with a series of controversial books.
In The Elusive Quest for Growth, Easterly argues that attempts to end poverty in the Third World are doomed to fail because they do not give the established institutions sufficient incentives to cooperate. He elaborates on this theme in his follow-up book, The White Man’s Burden.
Easterley is critical of “top-down” attempts to bring aid to countries and argues that attempts to do so equate to crypto-colonialism. He describes top-down donors as utopian “Planners” and prefers a bottom-up “Searchers” approach, which he describes as more realistic.
The White Man’s Burden won an FA Hayek Award from the Manhattan Institute in 2008. Currently, Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and the co-director of the university’s Development Research Institute. His other roles include associate editor work and being a “non-resident senior fellow” at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.
2. Roger W. Garrison
Roger Garrison is a professor of economics at Auburn University in Alabama. He is also a scholar of American libertarian academic organization, the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His specific area of interest is macroeconomics.
Garrison graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1974 with a master’s degree in economics, and he earned his PhD at the University of Virginia in 1981. He has taught all over the world, but is probably most famous for his book Time and Money, which offers a harsh criticism of Keynesian graphical analysis and provides a graphical outline for capital-based macroeconomics.
Garrison is a follower of the Austrian School of economics, which bases its analysis on the purposeful actions of individuals. According to acclaimed American economist and writer Mark Skousen, Garrison is “one of the premier Austrian macroeconomists today.”
1. Dambisa Moyo
Born and raised in Zambia, Dr. Dambisa Moyo is an international economist and critically acclaimed writer. Her bestselling books have analyzed everything from the rise of China to the ineffectiveness of overseas aid to Africa.
In her second book, How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly – And the Stark Choices that Lie Ahead, Moyo argues that America is likely to lose its economic lead over the developing world unless it makes radical changes to its current policies.
Moyo is also a prophet of doom for foreign assistance to Third World countries. She argues that development assistance has contributed to African dependency and corruption and negatively impacts on African economic growth.
2009 saw the fruits of Moyo’s labors greatly rewarded, as the World Economic Forum honored her as one of its Young Global Leaders, she was named as one of Time‘s 100 most influential people, and she featured on Oprah Winfrey’s 20 Remarkable Visionaries list.
Moyo writes regularly for economic publications like the The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and she is a board member of SABMiller, Barclays Bank, and Barrick Gold.