Includes index. Cohen, J., & Easterly, W. (Eds.). (2009). What works in development?: thinking big and thinking small. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Introduction: Thinking Big versus Thinking Small -- The New Development Economics: We Shall Experiment, but How Shall We Learn? -- Breaking out of the Pocket: Do Health Interventions Work? Which Ones and in What Sense? -- Pricing and Access: Lessons from Randomized Evaluations in Education and Health -- The Policy Irrelevance of the Economics of Education: Is Normative as Positive Just Useless, or Worse? -- The Other Invisible Hand: High Bandwidth Development Policy -- Big Answers for the Big Questions: The Presumption of Growth Policy -- Contributors -- Index

"What Works in Development?" brings together leading experts to address one of the most basic yet vexing issues in development: what do we really know about what works -- and what doesn't -- in fighting global poverty?. The contributors, including many of the world's most respected economic development analysts, focus on the ongoing debate over which paths to development truly maximize results. Should we emphasize a big-picture approach -- focusing on the role of institutions, macroeconomic policies, growth strategies, and other country-level factors? Or is a more grassroots approach the way to go, with the focus on particular microeconomic interventions such as conditional cash transfers, bed nets, and other microlevel improvements in service delivery on the ground? The book attempts to find a consensus on which approach is likely to be more effective." - From the Book.