Briefings

Finance

Analysis

Africa and the making of adjustment

Development economist and professor of African studies Howard Stein examines the evolution of policy in the Bank, focusing on how economists became hegemonic. In this essay he details the origin of structural adjustment, tracing its roots back to a set of neoliberal economists who gained influence at the Bank in the late 1970s.

29 September 2008 | At Issue

Accountability

Analysis

The IMF's regressive secret

While tax policy and reform is an election battleground in developed countries, the IMF has increasingly turned it into a secret technocratic exercise in developing countries. This briefing examines the IMF's involvement in providing advice on tax policy, particularly its recommendations for the imposition of value added taxes (VATs).

17 June 2008 | At Issue

Environment

Analysis

Is the Bank's carbon markets approach an effective way to address climate change?

The World Bank's involvement in the carbon market is under hot debate: Janet Redman from the Institute for Policy Studies opposes its approach while Jon Sohn, from Climate Change Capital argues that there is a role for the Bank to play.

4 February 2008 | At Issue

Private Sector

Analysis

The International Finance Corporation: Behind the rhetoric

There is evidence that the IFC's financing of small and medium enterprises, almost all of which occurs via financial intermediaries, is under-supervised, and that direct lending is still focused on large companies in emerging market economies with questionable value-added.

4 December 2007 | At Issue

IFI governance

Analysis

Double majority decision making at the IMF

Many have championed the use of double majorities at the IMF board in order to increase the ability of developing countries to influence decision making. The acceptance of this idea by incoming IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is welcome, but if he chooses to use a chair-based, rather than member-state-based, second majority it will not change the power dynamics at the board.

30 October 2007 | At Issue

Accountability

Analysis

Transparency at the IMF

A guide for civil society on getting access to information from the IMF

19 October 2007 | Briefings

IFI governance

Analysis

Reform of World Bank governance structures

This analytical note discusses potential governance reforms in the World Bank's governance structures, with an understanding that some reforms become more or less imperative depending on the direction of the discussions around the long-term strategic direction of the Bank.

12 October 2007 | Briefings

Finance

Analysis

Programme conditions, project safeguards: Quo vadis World Bank?

This briefing clarifies the landscape of programme conditions and project safeguards and what it implies for a move towards responsible lending standards.

8 October 2007 | At Issue

Accountability

Analysis

Consolidating ideology in law?

The World Bank has vastly increased the resources it commits to good governance, with a large portion of that going to a complex and under-researched area: legal and judicial reform. Researcher Victoria Harris explores how the Bank uses such reforms to cement in place its preferred market-based development paradigm.

25 July 2007 | At Issue

Infrastructure

Analysis

At the crossroads: Which way the World Bank's transport strategy?

Following an IEG evaluation of the World Bank's work in transport, and delays in the release of a new Bank transport strategy, Public World director Brendan Martin asks what the Bank has learned. With spending on transport likely to increase, what direction will the Bank's transport projects take from here and who is in the driver's seat?

2 July 2007 | At Issue

Social services

Analysis

The elusive quest for ‘fiscal space’

For the last several years the World Bank and IMF have squared off against governments, NGOs, UN agencies and even each other over the concept of ‘fiscal space’. This often nebulous and ill-defined term has caused much confusion. Nancy Alexander finds that at the heart of the matter is a difference of opinion over how and when governments should be allowed to invest in both infrastructure and basic services.

2 April 2007 | At Issue

Accountability

Analysis

The IFCs lessons of experience & the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project

In September 2006 the IFC published its first issue of a new publication entitled Lessons of Experience. However, the IFC's lessons drawn from the external compliance monitoring group in the Chad-Cameroon project read more like a tool to market the concept of external monitors to IFC clients than lessons meant to design a more effective role for the external monitor in improving implementation of social and environmental commitments.

23 November 2006 | Briefings