What Works in Development? – Thinking Big and Thinking Small

In What Works in Development? (Brookings Press, 2009), Brookings Nonresident Fellow Jessica Cohen and Nonresident Senior Fellow William Easterly bring together leading experts to address one of the most basic yet vexing issues in development: what do we really know about what works—and what doesn’t—in fighting global poverty? The authors focus on this key question and the ongoing debate over which paths to development truly maximize results.

On January 21, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings hosted a discussion on these fundamental global development questions with the book’s editors. Their discussion focused on the benefits and challenges of both a smaller grassroots development approach and a traditional big-picture development approach, with the goal of achieving a consensus on how to best leverage limited resources and time in the race to lift the lives of the world’s poorest. Devex President and Co-founder Raj Kumar moderated the discussion.