What’s the Best Way To Make Poor Countries Rich? Joseph Stiglitz, William Easterly at Reason/Soho Forum 8/27

“Is the best way to end global poverty free markets or government action?”

That’s the proposition under discussion at the next Reason-Soho Forum event, which features Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and former World Bank economist William Easterly. The conversation will be moderated by the Soho Forum’s co-founder, Gene Epstein.

The event takes place on Monday, August 27 at New York’s Subculture theater on Bleecker Street. Tickets cost between $12 and $24 and include entry to a reception featuring light fare and a cash bar. All tickets must be purchased online in advance (and they are going fast!).

Here’s more information about the participants and their basic positions:

William Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-director of the NYU Development Research Institute. He is the author of three books: The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (2014), The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), which won the FA Hayek Award from the Manhattan Institute, and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001). He has published 69 peer-reviewed academic articles, and has written columns and reviews for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Review of Books, and Washington Post. He has written: “Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development based on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. A recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), he is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former member and chairman of the (US president’s) Council of Economic Advisers. In 2011 Stiglitz was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has written “[Whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always, and especially in developing countries,then the invisible hand works most imperfectly. Significantly, there are desirable government interventions which, in principle, can improve upon the efficiency of the market.” [italics in original]

And here are event details:

Cash bar opens at 5:45pm
Event starts at 6:30pm
Subculture Theater
45 Bleecker St
NY, 10012

Seating must be reserved in advance.

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein

Each Soho Forum is released as a Reason TV video and a Reason Podcast (subscribe for free!). Recent events have included Peter Schiff and Erik Vorhees debating whether bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the future of money, economists Bryan Caplan and Edward Glaesar arguing over government funding for higher education, and Cathy Young and Michael Kimmel discussing “rape culture” on college campuses.

For a full archive, go here.

Here’s the video of the Reason-Soho Forum about bitcoin and the future of money.