Paul Collier has for many years challenged the conventional wisdom of development

economics, bringing our attention to the real-world impact of policies many of us take

for granted. His new book is called Left Behind. It is about how some countries or

regions in the world fall behind, and what we can do to help them recover. In this

week’s episode he talks to Tim Phillips about what causes a place to be left behind,

the difficulty in stopping that downward spiral, and what the places that have

recovered have in common.