Praise for Economic Gangsters
Book Reviews
[Economic Gangsters] is a superbly crafted set of essays that raise the bar for clear, accessible pop-economics writing, and offers an excellent overview of recent research into the corruption, violence and poverty that have long bedevilled the developing world.
— Bradford Plumer, The National (UAE)
…smart and eminently readable…
— Nicholas Kristof, On the Ground, NYTimes.com
In their beautifully written book Economic Gangsters, [Ray and Ted] shine a well-honed statistical spotlight on the twin evils of corruption and violence. The book is a dead-set page turner, and there's nothing more fun than feeling like you are next to them as they travel the world in search of the scoundrels responsible for so much suffering.
— Justin Wolfers, Freakonomics Blog
This thorough, thoughtful guide to global corruption is an engaging, disarmingly upbeat read for fans of Freakonomics and Malcolm Gladwell.
— Publisher's Weekly, October 2008
[Economic Gangsters] makes developmental economics both entertaining and accessible to a broad audience.
— Lawrence Maxted, Library Journal
[Economic Gangsters] is a well-written, accessible summary of their economic research on corruption, crime, civil war and other cheery subjects. I enjoyed it a lot.
— Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist
Brilliant!
— John Githongo, former Government of Kenya anti-corruption czar
Advance Praise
I already knew Fisman and Miguel were the best and the brightest in the new generation of development economists. Now I know they are great writers--and great detectives. They find ingenious ways to get inside the issues of corruption and violence that leave behind the tired analyses of the past. It's a lively tale that nobody concerned about world poverty or violence can afford to miss.
— William Easterly, author of The White Man's Burden
Economic Gangsters is a fascinating exploration into the dark side of economic development. Two of the world's most creative young economists use their remarkable talents for economic sleuthing to study violence, corruption, and poverty in the most unexpected ways. Subjected to their genius, seemingly inconsequential events (like New York City parking tickets and Suharto catching a cold) become potent tools in understanding how the world really works. Rarely has a book on economics been this fun and this important.
— Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics
Those who love to pontificate, unconstrained by data, about the nature of human evil, will hate this book. It takes on corruption, murder and civil wars, and shows us, step by step, how, economic methods, creatively used, can help us find relevant data in unexpected places, data that makes it possible to offer rigorous (and sometimes surprising) answers to questions that, hitherto, had been consigned to the realm of pure speculation.
— Abhijit Banerjee, Ford Foundation Professor of Economics at MIT and Director of the Poverty Action Lab
Economic Gangsters reveals the important connections between poverty, crime, and corruption, helping us to see what a small and intertwined world we live in.
— Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational