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In 1981 I took an International Trade course at NYU from the great Fritz Machlup [2]. (Pardon my bragging: I earned an A in Machlup’s class — and Machlup bragged that he refused to go along with grade inflation. To this day, my A in Machlup’s class counts as one of my proudest achievements.)
Anyway, one day in that class Machlup said that "the problem with development economics is that it attracts the least-developed economists." William Easterly (now at NYU) is a counter-example to Machlup’s claim. Easterly is a first-rate scholar, economist, and writer. His op-ed [3] in today’s Washington Post offers much wisdom on what ails Africa.