Easterly is the author of three books: The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001); The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), which won the 2008 Hayek Prize; and The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (2014),[3] which was a finalist for the 2015 Hayek Prize.

From 1985 to 2001 he worked at the World Bank as an economist and senior adviser at the Macroeconomics and Growth Division; he was also an adjunct professor at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

[7] In The White Man's Burden (the title refers to Rudyard Kipling's famous poem of the same name), Easterly elaborates on his views about the meaning of foreign aid.

He distinguishes two types of foreign aid donors: “Planners”, who believe in imposing top-down big plans on poor countries, and “Searchers”, who look for bottom-up solutions to specific needs.

The lack of individual rights, including political and economic ones, prevents the poor from implementing bottom-up, spontaneously emerging solutions to development problems, and from defending their interests from abusive dictators.

[13] Easterly has also produced a critical review of, and received a rebuttal from, Cambridge University economist Ha-Joon Chang, to which he offered a counter-rebuttal.

[16] In February 2025, amid efforts by the Donald Trump administration and Elon Musk to shutter USAID, Easterly criticized the move.