Foreign Aid

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Foreign aid cannot be the solution. Is not the source of ills. It's not the reason why places are less developed. If you throw money into an unchange istitutional structure, nothing is going to change. There are no silver bullet solutions for changing institutions. We have done much more than just send for an aid. It has done it within a given institutional structure. And unless that institutional structure changes, or unless you have a strategy for changing that institutional structure, which just doesn't work in general,. Unless there are some exceptional stances, its not going to work.

Daron Acemoglu of MIT and author (with James Robinson) of Why Nations Fail talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his book: why some nations fail and others succeed, why some nations grow over time and sustain that growth, while others grow and then stagnate. Acemoglu draws on an exceptionally rich set of examples over space and time to argue that differences in institutions--political governance and the inclusiveness of the political and economic system--explain the differences in economics success across nations and over time. Acemoglu also discusses how institutions evolve and the critical role institutional change plays in economic success or failure. Along the way, he explains why previous explanations for national economic success are inadequate. The conversation closes with a discussion of the implications of the arguments for foreign aid and attempts by the wealthy nations to help nations that are poor.