William Easterly

William Russell Easterly (born September 7, 1957) is an American economist, specializing in economic development. He is a professor of economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and co-director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He is a Research Associate of NBER, senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) of Duke University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Easterly is an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Growth.

Easterly is the author of three books: The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001); 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 2008 Hayek Prize; and The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (2014), which was a finalist for the 2015 Hayek Prize. Born in West Virginia and raised in Bowling Green, Ohio, Easterly received his BA from Bowling Green State University in 1979 and his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1985. From 1985 to 2001 he worked at the World Bank as an economist and senior adviser at the Macroeconomics and Growth Division; he was also an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

Easterly then worked at the Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development until 2003, when he began teaching at New York University.