Princeton University Press & the Centre for Economic Performance are pleased to invite you to

BOOK LAUNCH – ECONOMIC GANGSTERS: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations by Raymond Fisman & Edward Miguel

Chair: Alan Manning - Director Labour Markets Programme, CEP & Professor of Economics, London School of Economics

Speaker: Ray Fisman - Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and research director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School

Date: Wednesday 12 November 2008
Location: LSE BOX, 5th Floor, LSE Tower 3, Clements Inn, Off Aldwych, London WC2A 2AZ - map and directions

Time:
Registration 5.45pm
Speeches 6.00 - 6.30 pm
Questions 6.30 - 7.00pm
Reception 7.30pm

Places at this event are strictly limited, please RSVP to Jo Cantlay at j.m.cantlay@lse.ac.uk to reserve a seat.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

VIOLENCE, CORRUPTION, and POVERTY!
According to Ray Fisman and Ted Miguel, this is Business as Usual in the Life of the ECONOMIC GANGSTER

Meet the economic gangster. He's the United Nations diplomat who double-parks his Mercedes on New York City streets at rush hour because the cops can't touch him—he has diplomatic immunity. He's the Chinese smuggler who dodges tariffs by magically transforming frozen chickens into frozen turkeys. The dictator, the warlord, the unscrupulous bureaucrat who bilks the developing world of billions in aid. The calculating crook who views stealing and murder as just another part of his business strategy. And, in the wrong set of circumstances, he might just be you.

In ECONOMIC GANGSTERS: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations, Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel take readers into the secretive, chaotic, and brutal worlds inhabited by these lawless and violent thugs. Join these two sleuthing economists as they follow the foreign aid money trail into the grasping hands of corrupt governments and shady underworld characters. Spend time with ingenious black marketeers as they game the international system. Follow the steep rise and fall of stock prices of companies with unseemly connections to Indonesia's former dictator. See for yourself what rainfall has to do with witch killings in Tanzania—and more.

Fisman and Miguel use economics to get inside the heads of these "gangsters," and propose solutions that can make a difference to the world's poor—including cash infusions to defuse violence in times of drought, and steering the World Bank away from aid programmes most susceptible to corruption.

About the Authors:
Raymond Fisman is the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and research director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School. He is a columnist for Slate. Edward Miguel is associate professor of economics and director of the Center of Evaluations for Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley.

Press:

“Rarely has a book on economics been this fun and this important.”
― Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics

“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 corruptions 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 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

Links:

Princeton University Press website
Economic Gangsters website
Ray Fisman's webpage