Professor Paul Collier is an economist and academic who is known for his work on economic development and the causes of poverty in low-income countries. He is the author of several books on these topics, including "The Bottom Billion," which focuses on the challenges facing the poorest countries in the world and how they can break out of poverty. In this book, Collier identifies four development traps that can inhibit economic development and trap countries in poverty: the conflict trap, the natural resource trap, the landlocked with bad neighbors trap, and the bad governance trap.