I know I shouldn’t, but in truth I quite often judge a book by its cover. It’s not just the cover art — I’m a sucker for a good title. I don’t have enough time to read as it is, so I have to be picky. A clever, creative title draws me in with the promise that I won’t be wading through another tedious tome. Gasoline, Guns, and Giveaways, a recent working paper by Chris Hoy and Andy Sumner of the Center for Global Development, does not disappoint. The central question they ask is whether national resources are available but not being used to end poverty. Spoiler alert: the answer is yes! And you won’t need an advanced command of econometrics to follow their evidence-based arguments.

Hoy and Sumner find that most developing countries could dramatically speed up the end of poverty without waiting ages for economic growth alone to do the trick. Basically, three-quarters of global poverty could be eliminated by raising new taxes and reallocating public spending. — blogs.adb.org/blog