Book review of The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Poverty

摘要

Recent years have witnessed a stream of books on multiple aspects of the tragedy of human poverty. Some of them like "Poor Economics" (A. Banerjee and E. Duflo, 2012 paperback); "More than Good Intentions" (D. Karlan and J. Appel, 2012 paperback); or "Working Hard, Working Poor" (G. Fields, 2012) are pitched toward both specialized and lay audiences. By contrast, other books like "Understanding Poverty" (edited by A. Banerjee, R. Benabou and D. Mookherjee, 2006) or "Debates on The Measurement of Global Poverty (edited by S. Anand, P. Segal and J. Stiglitz, 2010), are more appropriate for readers with formal academic training and scholars familiarized with the subject. The new "Oxford Handbook of The Economics of Poverty" (2012) belongs to the latter group of academic texts.