William Easterly explains how Portfolios of the Poor gives us a more realistic look at the life of poor people and how it changes the perspective on the “consumption smoothing” concept. William Easterly is an American economist, specializing in economic growth and foreign aid. He is a Professor of Economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and Co-Director of NYU’s Development Research Institute. He is also a visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Global Development in Washington DC. Easterly is an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Growth, and of the Journal of Development Economics.