What Works in Development?: Thinking Big and Thinking Small

Recent years have seen a dramatic shift in the fight against global poverty. A smaller, grass-roots approach has grown more prevalent, nearly replacing the traditional big-picture approach. Yet despite this movement, consensus on what works for growth and development remains elusive. "Thinking big" approaches focus on macroeconomic policies, growth strategies, and other country-level factors, while "thinking small" mind-sets utilize conditional cash transfers, bed nets, and other microlevel improvements on a smaller scale.

In What Works in Development? Jessica Cohen and William Easterly bring together world-renowned development analysts to examine both schools of thought. Why is the big-picture approach in crisis? What are the merits and drawbacks of the randomized evaluations used in analyzing the micropolicy approach? In asking these questions, the contributors attempt to explain what policy has worked in the past, with an eye toward what is likely to work in the future.