Global Development: Views from the Center

Bill Cline has implied the Bank no longer views trade liberalization as important for poverty reduction, that our new numbers involve serious underestimation, and that his 440 million estimate last year is closer to reality. (See Controversy Over World Bank Trade and Poverty Estimates)

The past week has been a good one for nation-building, and not just because of Iraq’s successful election. Less noticed but also important was the creation of a UN Peacebuilding Commission and a new directive from President Bush on interagency coordination of U.S. reconstruction and stabilization efforts

Nora Lustig a CGD Board member and an early and effective advocate for combining sound macroeconomic policy with effectively targeted social programs, is the focus of a thoughtful profile in this month's F&D, the quarterly magazine of the IMF.

Three years ago the World Bank said that freeing international trade of all barriers and subsidies would lift 320 million people above the $2 a day poverty line by 2015. But new World Bank projections emphasizing $1 a day poverty and based on new data and methods put the number at just 32 million people. CGD/IIE Senior Fellow William R. Cline, author of Trade Policy and Global Poverty, has been examining the Bank's new calculations and argues that the first estimate was closer to the truth.