Sublime

decisionmaking came to be seen as the result of a bargaining process among family members

“Economic institutions shape economic incentives, the incentives to become educated, to save and invest, to innovate and adopt new technologies, and so on. Political institutions determine the ability of citizens to control politicians.”5

This is the paradox of the poor and their businesses: They are energetic and resourceful and manage to make a lot out of very little. But most of this energy is spent on businesses that are too small and utterly undifferentiated from the many others around them.

Our contribution would be a drop in the bucket, and the bucket probably leaks. This book is an invitation to think again, again: to turn away from the feeling that the fight against poverty is too overwhelming, and to start to think of the challenge as a set of concrete problems that, once properly identified and understood, can be solved one at a

researchers in this book were asked, for such targets, to attempt to identify the nonabsolute value that would provide the best benefit-cost ratio over the next 15 years.

Private companies could continue to sell exactly the kinds of insurance they are currently willing to sell (catastrophic care with a strict cap, indexed weather insurance, and so forth). But for the time being, the government should pay a part of insurance premiums for the poor.

better conversation must start by acknowledging the deep human desire for dignity and human contact, and to treat it not as a distraction, but as a better way to understand each other, and to set ourselves free from what appear to be intractable oppositions. Restoring human dignity to its central place, we argue in this book, sets off a profound re

The fact that history repeats itself does not make it less unpleasant the second or third time around. But perhaps it helps us understand better how to react to this anger.

Even when our preferences do not directly depend on what other people do, the behavior of others can convey a signal that alters our beliefs and our behavior.