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Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics.

The book that will change the way we think about poverty and what we should do to alleviate it.

How does one live on less than a dollar a day? Why are microcredits useful but not the miracle some expected? Why do the poor skip free vaccination campaigns but pay for medicines they often don't need? Why can their children go to school year after year and learn nothing? Why don't they always invest in obtaining more calories, but rather calories that taste better?

Our tendency to reduce the poor to a set of clichés has, until now, prevented us from understanding the problems they face daily. Given that they possess so little, we have assumed that there is nothing of interest in their economic life. Government policies aimed at helping them often fail because they are based on erroneous assumptions regarding their circumstances and behavior.

Poor Economics represents a revolutionary turn in the way we approach the global fight against poverty. Its authors, two renowned MIT economists, have gone directly to the protagonists to understand how the economy of the poor truly works, what their motivations and aspirations are. The results of their observations contradict many of our most deeply rooted beliefs.

The innovative approach of this book begins by changing the questions. From there, it offers answers and, with them, great transformative potential and an essential guide for politicians, activists, and anyone concerned with building a world without inequality.