Portrait of Dambisa Moyo
Reading List
Dambisa Moyo
Economist and Author
Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian-born economist who worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs before writing on development, growth and capital.
Dead Aid (2009) argued that decades of government-to-government aid had entrenched dependency and corruption in Africa, and proposed capital markets, trade and remittances instead; it was widely debated and widely disputed. How the West Was Lost (2011) and Winner Take All (2012), on China’s global resource strategy, followed, and Edge of Chaos (2018) turned to the shortening horizons of democratic politics.
She has served on the boards of several public companies.
The Net Delusion
The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
by Evgeny Morozov
“I think it’s a brilliant insight, from a very young author from Belarus who lives in the West. Some people tend to dismiss his ideas because we live in a world where people believe what they want to believe. It’s like the aid world – everyone wants to believe that giving money to Africa helps. Everybody wants to believe that social media have been the reason why Iran, Egypt and other places have had uprisings.” — via Interview, May 2011
This Time Is Different
Eight Centuries of Financial Folly
by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff
“If you travel around the US, the UK and Europe, people say “China this, China that…” and I find myself constantly having to remind people: China is still a very poor country! On a per capita income basis, they’re still number 99 in the world. Their financial markets are not developed at all. At the moment, there are all sorts of risks that we are seeing – the property markets in China are just one example.” — via Interview, May 2011
The Party
The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
by Richard McGregor
“It’s a sneak peak into the way the Communist Party works. Clearly the Chinese government has succeeded in providing a policy environment that incentivises people to do things – to work hard, to make money – without it necessarily being democratic. Like it or not, they have a rule of law, they have some transparency – certainly enough that foreigners are happy to invest there.” — via Interview, May 2011
The End of the Free Market
Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?
by Ian Bremmer
“Bremmer looks at the East-West theme largely through a political lens. One of his quips encapsulates his fundamental view: “In the Rest the state controls the corporations whereas in the West the corporations control the state.” My reading of his work is that in the West, the influence of the corporations has led to an erosion of political culture: they’ve infiltrated the political discourse.” — via Interview, May 2011
Civilization
The West and the Rest
by Niall Ferguson · 2012 · History
“But there has not been anything that I have read that has been more all-encompassing: looking at religion, looking at East versus West not just as US versus China, but also bringing in other elements like Islam, cultural aspects, historical context, work ethic, Calvinism. So that’s what really drew me to this book. If I were to be critical of an economist’s perspective, it’s that we tend to have a very narrow lens.” — via Interview, May 2011