The Bottom Billion

While in Honduras I finished another interesting read on the subject of world poverty and how to eradicate it. The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at Oxford University, takes a scientific approach to determine why the poorest countries are so poor, and what can be done to improve their lot.

Collier's thesis is that these countries - not listed in the book, but roughly identified as the poorest 50 or so - are different in kind rather than by degree, from the rest of the world economy.

Collier identifies four main "traps" that these countries have fallen into: the conflict trap (civil wars, coups, etc.), the natural resource trap (counter intuitive evidence that large deposits of natural resources substantially hurt the host nation's economy), the trap of being landlocked with bad neighboring countries, and the trap of bad governance in a small country.

After identifying the traps, Collier goes on to propose very specific, and quite interesting methods of how to emerge from them. His discoveries and ideas are very rationally supported by original research studies performed by he and his colleagues.

This is terrific background information. However, most of the solutions proposed by Collier are to be implemented at the governmental level. Hopefully the world's leaders are paying attention to this book!