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...favorable most others have seen written by economists, but it did nonetheless take issue with the main thesis of the book--that African developing countries are caught in a "poverty trap" and that a doubling of ODA to Africa would work to break the poverty trap and lift African counties onto the bottom rung of the "ladder of economic development."
Lest I be dismissed as naive and uncaring before I even begin these brief remarks, allow me to mitigate. I don't dispute that the rich countries of the world can afford to increase Official Development Assistance (ODA), maybe even meet the 0.7 percent of GNP target. I also believe that more humanitarian aid should be given to impoverished people in developing countries. What I do not agree with is the proposition put forth in Sachs' book, and by other advocates of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG), that a doubling of aid would serve to break an alleged poverty trap and launch self-sustaining economic growth in those countries that have not yet achieved it. My doubts about the effectiveness of foreign aid as a spur to economic growth derive from studying the literature on the aid-growth nexus and from my experience working and living in Vietnam and other developing countries, most recently three years in China.
If not foreign aid, then how did developing countries accounting for about two-thirds of world population manage to escape the poverty trap and get a foothold on the ladder of development? The answer can only be that they were not "trapped" in poverty in the first place, but instead were victims of their own misguided and inappropriate policies. In one country after another, economic policy reforms have led to rapid industrialization, an acceleration of economic growth, declining poverty and...
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