The World Bank: Its First Half Century, Volume 1Brookings Institution Press, 2011 M08 1 - 1276 pages This effort constitutes the most comprehensive and authoritative work to date on the history of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or the World Bank. Author-editors John Lewis, Richard Webb, and Devesh Kapur chronicle the evolution of this institution and offer insights into its successes, failures, and prospects for the future. The result of their intense labors is an invaluable resource for other researchers and a fascinating study in its own right. The work is divided into two volumes. The first is organized thematically and examines the critical events and policy issues in the World Bank's development over the last fifty years. Chapter topics include poverty alleviation, structural adjustment lending, environmental programs, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the International Development Association (IDA), and the evolution of the Bank as an institution. The second volume contains case studies written by experts with experience in the various regions in which the Bank operates. There are chapters on the Bank's activities in Korea, Mexico, Africa, South Asia, and Eastern Europe. Volume 2 also contains essays on the World Bank's relationship with the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, and its partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). By special arrangement, the authors have had wide-ranging access to confidential documents at the World Bank, making this work a unique source of information on the internal workings of this critical institution. They have also drawn on extensive interviews with current and past Bank officials. Moreover, publication could not be more timely, coming as it does when many in the development community and in the U.S. Congress are questioning the Bank's track record and even its reason for existence. The World Bank: Its First Half Century will be of great interest not only to development practitioners but also to students of international relations, development economics, and global finance. During the course of the project, John P. Lewis and Richard Webb were nonresident senior fellows, and Devesh Kapur was a program associate, in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution. |
Contents
Introduction | xv |
CHAPTERS 27 | 47 |
The Bank for Reconstruction 19441948 | 53 |
The Bank of the 1950s | 81 |
Approaching the Poor 19591968 | 135 |
Poverty Moves Up | 211 |
Waging War on Poverty | 265 |
Demotion and Rededication 1981 to the mid1990s | 327 |
The Weakness of Strength The Challenge of SubSaharan Africa | 679 |
The International Finance Corporation | 801 |
CHAPTERS 1416 | 899 |
The Evolution of the World Bank as a Financial Institution | 903 |
Riding the Credit Boom | 949 |
Coping with Financial Turbulence | 1017 |
IDA The Bank as a Dispenser of Concessional Aid | 1117 |
The Banks Institutional Identity Governance Internal Management External Relations | 1159 |
Agriculture and Rural Development | 375 |
PolicyLinked Lending I | 445 |
PolicyLinked Lending II | 509 |
The Latin American Debt Crisis | 591 |
Some Key Events in the History of the World Bank Group 19441996 | 1215 |
Index | 1233 |
Common terms and phrases
adjustment lending administrative agenda agricultural American annual assistance balance of payments Bank lending Bank Oral History Bank staff Bank's Barber Conable became Board borrowers Brazil Bretton Woods capital Colombia commercial banks Committee Conable Côte d'Ivoire creditworthiness debt crisis decade developing countries disbursements donors early economist effort Ernest Stern Eugene Black exchange rate export external fiscal foreign Fund Ghana growth Ibid IBRD income increased India Indonesia industrial initiative institution institution's International investment issue Kenya Knapp Latin America macroeconomic Mahbub ul Haq major McNamara Meeting Memorandum ment Mexico million multilateral official operations percent Philippines political poor poverty alleviation problem production projects proposed reform region Review Robert Robert McNamara role rural development sector social Stanley Fischer strategy structural adjustment Sub-Saharan Africa Tanzania technical tion urban vice president World Bank Oral
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