This title is winner of the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2011. Why would a man in Morocco who doesn't have enough to eat buy a television? Why do the poorest people in India spend 7 percent of their food budget on sugar? Does having lots of children actually make you poorer? This eye-opening book overturns the myths about what it is like to live on very little, revealing the unexpected decisions that millions of people make every day. Looking at some of the most paradoxical aspects of life below the poverty line - why the poor need to borrow in order to save, why incentives that seem effective to us may not be for them, and why, despite being more risk-taking than high financiers, they start businesses but rarely grow them - Banerjee and Duflo offer a new understanding of the surprising way the world really works.

《富国陷阱:发达国家为何踢开梯子?》提出当今的发达国家正在试图踢开那个能使发展中国家爬到顶端的“梯子”，即行之有效的政策和制度，向发展中国家介绍所谓的“好政策、好制度”，以此来阻止发展中国家的发展。作者提出了一个十分重要的问题：发展中国家与发达国家实际上处于一个十分微妙的关系，发展中国家往往不切实际地幻想得到发达国家的真诚帮助，而发达国家则处处遏止发展中国家登上发达的台阶。《富国陷阱:发达国家为何踢开梯子?》论据充分，资料翔实，对于中国改革近30年后思考发展战略有重要参考价值。