"Poor Economics"

"Poor Economics" in Japanese

Although it is still November, "Poor Economics --A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty--" by A. Banerjee and E. Duflo will be my "book of the year 2021". There weren't any heavy economic mathematical formulas in this book. Not only did it show and give me much to think about regarding global poverty, but I also felt it was very interesting that the researchers' method was similar to the fieldwork in sociology.
 
There was another thing that impressed me. The translator from English into Japanese (H. Yamagata) is a consultant for urban development. Amazingly, he translated the 370-page-long and detailed text with various regional characteristics in an easy-to-understand way.
 
A past student of mine was an economics lecturer and he told me that he would be using the original English version in his graduate class at a university in Kyoto to critique and discuss. Therefore, I started reading the Japanese translation, thinking it might be useful for our Japanese lessons.
 
Unfortunately, he ended up changing his schedule, so I never got around to reading it. However, the situation of being homebound because of Covid-19 provided me the perfect opportunity to read up on the book.
 
A lot of problems and issues are academically systematized, but along with hope. Like the authors, I cannot help but hope that the world will gradually get better.