The World Bank and the Poor

The authors of a recent textbook on the Economics of Development (P. A. Yotopoulos and J . B. Nugent, 1976) chose as the title of their first chapter 'The Record of Economic Development and Disillusionment with Development Economics'. It is striking that dissatisfaction with this young branch of the tree of economics has become so strong that a textbook treatment of the subject matter takes Disillusionment as its point of departure. True, the Disillusion ment chapter is followed by many other chapters - there is, after all, some thing to be said on development economics that is worth saying - but the wording has changed, and frequently the focus as well, in comparison to the development economics of the 1950s and 'sixties. Dissatisfaction and disillusionment may be interpreted optimistically as an inevitable stage in the coming-of-age process of development economics. Others may say that the search for a new paradigm is the core of the problem. At any rate, there is no room for complacency. It cannot be denied that at least part of the 'early' development theory came into being as a justification ex post of policy measures that, for a variety of reasons, were judged desirable or essen tial.

Contenu
I. Introduction.- II. Growth and Evolution of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.- IBRD Membership.- Growth of Lending Commitments.- Distribution of Bank Lending by Country.- Financing the Bank.- Determinants of Bank Lending by Country.- III. Growth and Evolution of the International Development Association.- Historical Background.- Growth of IDA Activities.- Source of Funds: An Overview.- Prospects for ODA and IDA Financing.- Lending Policies: Distribution by Countries.- Bank Group Lending Policy: Distribution by Sector.- The Pre-Investment Function in the UN System.- Conclusion.- IV. Bank Staff.- Growth of Bank Staff.- Representation.- Senior Bank Staff.- Factors in the Recruitment of Bank and UN Staff.- The Young Professionals' Programme.- The Future.- V. Economic Growth and Poverty, and Prospects for a Reallocation of World Bank Group Resources.- Post-War Economic Growth Records.- Prospects for Reallocation of Bank Group Resources Towards Poorer Countries.- Annex.- VI. Issues in Small-Farmer Projects.- The Technological Package and Agricultural Research.- Land Reform and Bank Policy.- Agricultural Credit and Bank Policy.- Integrated Rural Development Programmes.- Replicability, the Bureaucratic Bottleneck, and the Bank.- Lending for Rural Development: Early Experiences.- Conclusion.- VII. The Organization of the World Bank.- The Nature of the Task: the Structure of the Organization.- Evolution of the Bank's Organizational Structure.- Evolution of the Bank's Organizational Style.- Is Decentralization the Answer?.- VIII. Conclusions.