"Retail with a Conscience"

From "Creating a Market for Fair Trade" by Evelyn Iritani, L.A. Times:

"William Easterly, a former World Bank economist who teaches at New York University, called the fair-trade movement a 'brilliant marketing ploy' that had shown limited success in reducing poverty. He said a far better way to help poor African farmers would be to remove the barriers that prevent them from exporting their sugar and cotton to the U.S. and Europe." [more...]