William Easterly: What's Right & Wrong with USAID

Professor William Easterly has long been a vocal and influential critic of the western foreign aid establishment, arguing that it often serves to prop up corrupt, dysfunctional regimes and displace organic, locally-driven growth in the very countries it aims to help. Yet Easterly has been equally appalled DOGE’s de facto demolition of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which abruptly halted myriad aid programs with little effort to plan a transition or sort out which were demonstrably effective. Whatever your own views on foreign aid, our conversation is sure to provide ample food for thought.

Easterly is Professor of Economics at New York University and Co-director of the NYU Development Research Institute, as well as a former economist with the World Bank. He is the author of four books: Violent Saviors: The West’s Conquest of the Rest (November 2025), The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (2014), The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), and The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001).