WASHINGTON, D.C. - USAID Administrator Dr. Raj Shah and MIT economist Dr. Esther Duflo will lead USAID's 2011 development forum on May 23. Entitled Radically Rethinking Global Poverty, the forum will provide an opportunity for USAID staff and leading experts and practitioners from outside the Agency to discuss international development issues.

Dr. Duflo's latest work, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, co-authored with Abhijit Banerjee, examines poverty from the perspective of those living on less than 99 cents per day. The book investigates some of the most surprising facets of poverty: why the poor need to borrow in order to save, why they miss out on free life-saving immunizations but pay for drugs they do not need, why they start many businesses but do not grow any of them, and many other puzzling trends. Though it opens with a moral argument to fight poverty, the authors challenge policymakers to avoid lazy, formulaic approaches and to subject every idea to more rigorous thinking and analysis.

 Media RSVP's can be sent to anbailey@usaid.gov