College, Oxford. From 1998–2003 he took a five-year Public Service leave during which he was Director of the Research Development Department of the World Bank. He is currently a Professeur invité at Sciences Po and a Director of the International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics. He has written for the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Collier has authored numerous books, including The Bottom Billion (2007) which in 2008 won the Lionel Gelber, Arthur Ross and Corine prizes and in May 2009 was the joint winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book prize.
He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his latest book, Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places, and reported the following:
The page 99 test works pretty well for Left Behind. The page is in a chapter which gives examples of how good leadership can make a difference. The page starts with the remarkable and little-known story of Seretse Khama, the founding president of Botswana. His country, newly Independent, was an arid, landlocked little territory in southern Africa. Under his leadership, it became the fastest growing country in the world and is now the richest country in black Africa.Learn more about the book and author at Paul Collier's website.
Page 99 then turns to Deng Xiaoping, and how he rescued China from the disasters of Mao by devolving decision-taking to the 40 regions. My editors regard the pages that run on from 99 as some of the most amazing revelations in the book.
But, of course, it’s a book, not just a few pages. I rewrote it many times to make it fun to read while offering an innovative new analysis of how places can fall badly behind, not just in Africa, but in many parts of America - the ‘flyover’ towns and cities.
This morning (August 3rd), Michael Sandel, whom I know and admire, sent me his new essay in the New York Times about this tragedy of America’s many left behind communities. He sees improving their fate as the central issue for winning the election. As he says, now is the perfect time for Left Behind to come out. It does not just draw attention to the problem, but sets out solutions with examples of how they have worked elsewhere.
Since Left Behind is only just published in the US, I haven’t had other American reactions yet. But another of this morning’s emails was from a Swiss reader who had seen the UK edition. Unlike Michael Sandel he isn’t famous, as he stresses, he is just an ordinary guy. But he took the trouble to send me a full page of thoughtful comments, and I’ll share the key ones. ‘I was impressed by its breadth of scope and depth of concepts on how to tackle the problems….. the pragmatic, solution-oriented approach that defines the book, at no time at the expense of scientific rigour. The book has certainly given me many hours of intense reflection and thinking, which is one of my favourite activities.’
The parts of the book which I think are most innovative effectively demolish Milton Friedman’s economic analysis of how cities hit by an adverse shock such as a factory closure would automatically recover. Friedman used the image of the plucked string of a harp to summarise a complex argument – the string would vibrate a bit but rapidly go back to where it was. I use a different image to explain why that has repeatedly turned out to be wrong: market forces amplify an adverse shock rather than cushion it. I’m particularly proud that my economics has been endorsed by both Ragu Rajan, professor at the Booth School in Chicago where Friedman taught, and by Rebecca Henderson of Harvard Business School. Friedman was doubly wrong because not only do market forces drag places further down, so does social psychology. In places that suffer a shock, people often start to blame each other.
But the part of the book that is most enjoyable – as that Swiss reader noticed – are the inspiring stories. They show how people in communities – in America, in Africa, and around the world - have often found a new common purpose in trying to renew they town or city to make it attractive for the next generation. Nor need it depend upon good political leadership – a key chapter shows that the process is sometimes driven not by leaders but by social movements;. Young people come together to bury differences of colour or party loyalties; unions and businesses come together to renew the city of which they are both proud.
Left Behind is a hopeful book, and unlike political charlatans, the hope it offers is solidly based on credible analysis. I have worked hard at it, learning from the thousands of emails sent by readers of my previous books. I look forward to hearing reactions from readers of this post – including the negative ones. I undertake to answer as many as possible.
Read J. Tyler Dickovick's interview with Collier about his award-winning book, The Bottom Billion.
The Page 99 Test: The Bottom Billion.
The Page 99 Test: The Plundered Planet.
--Marshal Zeringue