In one important respect, the new book is a significant departure from their previous one. Poor Economics, as its name suggests, focused on poor countries. Good Economics for Hard Times focuses instead on the policy debates that are getting so much attention in wealthy countries. (Obviously, since it was written long before the coronavirus pandemic, it doesn’t touch on that issue.) Although it’s clear that their real expertise is microeconomics (the study of how individual people make decisions) rather than macroeconomics (the study of how an overall economy behaves), Banerjee and Duflo are good at assembling and explaining the facts behind contentious issues like immigration, inequality, and trade.