Leading economists study and challenge the UN's new sustainable development agenda. Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center makes the case for prioritizing the most powerful development targets. This book is an accessible read for policy-makers and practitioners, as well as scholars and graduate students working in economics and development studies.

An analysis of the UN's 2016-2030 development targets, and the case for prioritizing the most powerful investment areas.

Advance praise: 'That sort of principle, which associates benefits with costs, ought to be applied to massive investments in human development. Unfortunately, we need to choose which terrible blights we need to prevent and which we do not. People hate thinking that way (and they hate those who write about it). Nobody wants to put dollar values on a disease, a treatment, a life, an ocean, or the future of a country. But feel-good virtue alone rarely succeeds, and, if the Millennium Development Goals have demonstrated anything, it is that this planet and the people who live so tenuously on it will survive only if we spend our money on programs that work.' Michael Specter, The New Yorker