Bruce Wydick on Being a Shrewd Samaritan
In this episode, Steven McMullen interviews economist Bruce Wydick about his recent book Shrewd Samaritan: Faith, Economics, and the Road to Loving our Global Neighbor (Thomas Nelson, 2019). (https://www.thomasnelson.com/9780785221524/shrewd-samaritan/) Bruce is a Professor of Economics and the director of the Program in International and Development Economics at the University of San Francisco. He is also affiliated with the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame, the Center for effective global action at Berkley, and is helping build an institute for poverty and development studies with Westmont College in San Francisco. He is also a founding director of the non-profit Mayan partners. Wydick is a real leader and exemplar for Christians in the economics profession. His work is focused on improving the lives of those in poverty around the world, and he has made a name for himself as a creative scholar. In this episode, we talk broadly about what works and what doesn't work in global economic development. Wydick makes a strong case for holistic interventions that support the whole person, and he aptly connects this approach with his Christian faith. For a guide to much of Bruce's work, check out his personal webpage. (https://sites.google.com/a/usfca.edu/wydick/home) Here is the study about child sponsorships that we discuss in this conversation (https://bit.ly/3cIeNdL), see also a blog post about it at the World Bank (https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/does-child-sponsorship-pay-adulthood). And finally, a recent paper by Bruce that I have found valuable in my own work. (https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6xb8f996)