Publications

What should the World Bank optimally do with the US$10 to $20 billion it can loan each year? Has it, in fact, done what is optimal? This study suggests a simple framework within which to measure the World Bank against an optimal international public financier for development. It goes on to argue that a careful treatment of the empirical evidence on Bank lending strongly contradicts optimal behavior under different assumptions. The evidence, in fact, rejects any notion that the Bank has substituted for private capital or that it has successfully catalyzed private development finance.

In this analysis, Steve Radelet reviews the Millennium Challenge Account’s (MCA) foundational tenets of country selection, ownership and organization. He also identifies some concerns, particularly the proposal to include lower-middle income countries at a later date; the statistical difficulties with requiring countries to pass a survey-based corruption indicator; and the potential coordination problems that may arise with two separate U.S. foreign assistance agencies.

The devil will be in the details in the establishment of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)--as it is with most organizational innovations. In this MCA Monitor Analysis Carol Lancaster identifies five major issues that must be addressed: the political process by which the MCC will be established; how the MCC will be funded; the criteria for eligibility; implementation of programs; and the management of the organization, including the role of the Board.

We assess the dynamic behind the high net resource transfers of donors and creditors, IDA, bilaterals, IBRD, IMF and other multilateral creditors to the countries of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. Analyzing a panel of 37 recipient countries over the years 1978-98, we find that net transfers were greater in poorer and smaller countries. The quality of countries' policy framework mattered little, however, in determining overall net transfers.

In this MCA Monitor Analysis Nancy Birdsall argues that the MCA principle of country eligibility based on performance has merit, and maintains that the application of eligibility criteria may not be as restrictive as some fear.

This study develops an index of trade policy designed to synthesize the state of developing country access to import markets in each of the major industrial country areas.

The paper sets out two views of the facts about the effects of globalization on world poverty and inequality. The bottom line: globalization is not the cause, but neither is it the solution to world poverty and inequality. The paper then explores why and how the global economy is stacked against the poor, making globalization asymmetric, at least up to now. It concludes with some ideas about a new agenda of good global politics, an agenda to shape a future global economy and society that is less poor and less unequal—not only because it is more global and competitive, but also because it is more fair and more politically representative.

One feature of adjustment loans that has been often overlooked in their evaluation is their frequent repetition to the same country, with such extremes as the 30 IMF and World Bank adjustment loans to Argentina over 1980-99 or the 26 adjustment loans to Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. Repetition changes the nature of the selection problem, with the possible implication that new loans had to be given because earlier loans were not effective. This study finds that while there were relative successes and failures, none of the top 20 recipients of adjustment lending over 1980-99 were able to achieve reasonable growth and contain all policy distortions. The findings of this paper are in line with the foreign aid literature that shows that aid does not discriminate between good and bad policies. There's a big difference between structural adjustment lending and structural adjustment policies.