The Hobbled Giant


Book Description

First published in 1984. In these essays, Stanley Please contends that the World Bank is constrained in its ability to use its position and .power in the interests of more rapid development of the poorer countries of the world. These constraints derive in large part from the legal restriction on the Bank to engage primarily in project lending and from the division of responsibility between the ·Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Although the Bank's financing of projects and investment programs has made a significant contribution, Mr. Please argues that greater Bank involvement in national policy formation can greatly benefit economic development. He looks at ways to increase cooperation between the Bank and the IMF, examines the policy work the Bank has done in the past and assesses the capacity of the Bank for policy formation, evaluates the need for it to do more such work, and discusses the likely responses of developing and developed countries to these changes




World Bank


Book Description




Between Two Worlds


Book Description

The global debt and adjustment crisis has challenged the World Bank to become the leading agency in North-South finance and development. The many dimensions of this challenge--which must be comprehensively addressed by the Bank's new president--are the subject of this important volume in the Overseas Development Council's U.S.-Third World Policy Perspectives series. The Bank's ability to design and implement a comprehensive response to global economic needs is threatened by competing objectives and uncertain priorities. Can the Bank design programs attractive to private investors that also serve the very poor? Can it emphasize efficiency while transferring technologies that maximize labor absorption? Can it aggressively condition loans on policy reforms without attracting the criticism that has accompanied IMF programs? Can it meet the needs of the 1990s with the internal organization and staff of the early 1980s? The contributors to this volume assess the role that the World Bank can play in the period ahead. They argue for new financial and policy initiatives and for new conceptual approaches to development, as well as for a restructuring of the Bank as it takes on new systematic responsibilities in the new decade.




Survive!


Book Description

In the twenty-third century, Earth's scientists finally unlock the secret of faster than light travel, and humankind begins journeying to the stars. Unfortunately, the travel comes with perilous risks. While exploring the galaxy and looking for habitable worlds for human colonization, the United Earth Space Force exploratory ship, Copernicus, is destroyed by an encounter with an unexpected meteor storm as it orbits a newly discovered planet twelve light years from Earth. Of the more than one hundred scientists and crew members aboard, only a few escape to the surface of Planet Tau Ceti g--one being Chris Elliott, a thirty-six-year-old xenobiologist who now must struggle to help himself and the other survivors to stay alive on an unfriendly, alien world. With dwindling resources and no communication with Earth to coordinate a rescue, the group is forced to battle hostile elements and creatures never before seen by humans. Now only time will tell if any of them will live long enough to see a rescue. In this science fiction thriller, a young scientist leads the charge as he and the remaining crew members attempt to survive on an unwelcoming planet with nothing but ingenuity, perseverance, and hope.




The Global Effects of Fund-Supported Adjustment Programs


Book Description

This is the second of a group of papers dealing with various aspects of Fund-supported adjustment Programs.




Europe and Economic Reform in Africa


Book Description

This book explores the complex, post-colonial relationship between Europe and African states. Using new field work as well as existing material the author explores * the dynamics of diplomacy * the operating practices of EU agreements * responses to debt and structural adjustment




Economic Theory and Financial Policy


Book Description

As former Director of Research and a founding member of the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund, Jacques J. Polak has advised theoreticians and policymakers worldwide. This collection brings together his most current writings, and is published under the auspices of the IMF. The hallmark of Dr. Polak's recent research has been his ability to draw on decades of personal experience and reflection to comprehend and describe the context for current policy debates. In the past decade, he has contributed much to the debates on international financial policy and the role of the IMF, and this volume brings together most of these recent papers to make them accessible to a broader audience.




World Bank Financing of Education


Book Description

Based on detailed analysis of thousands of confidential World Bank documents, this book demonstrates that the World Bank lies at the centre of the major changes in global education of our time. It outlines the evolution of World Bank lending policies in education, and assesses the policy impact of the Bank's educational projects, looking at how it has: shaped the economic and social policies of many governments, including policies that affect education been an influential proponent of the rapid expansion of formal education systems around the world, financing much of that expansion been instrumental in forging those policies that see education as a precursor to modernisation served as a major purveyor of Western ideas about how education and the economy are, or should be, related. Following on from the success of the first edition, this revised edition covers topical issues of globalisation and looks into the political debate concerning aid to developing countries. It will be of enormous value to those studying, or working in, educational policy in developing countries, international organisations and financial institutions, and aid agencies.




Between Light and Shadow


Book Description

Much has been written on the human rights relevance and impacts of the policies and activities of the World Bank and IMF --or International Financial Institutions (IFIs). However while many of the human rights-based critiques of the Bank and Fund purport to link broadly defined reforms with obligations under international human rights law,rarely has this been carried out through a rigorous and in-depth application of international legal rules governing the proper interpretation of the institutions' mandates, and rarely have the policy consequences and practical possibilities for human rights integration been explored in any detail. These are the principal gaps that the present book aims to fill, by reference to a sample of the IFIs' most important and controversial contemporary activities.




Neoliberal Africa


Book Description

Neoliberalism has shaped African development for nearly thirty years. As such, it is not an economic 'shock' or a 'structural adjustment', but rather a historic shift in Africa's development politics and policy. This book explores the ways in which African countries have experienced the neoliberal project, highlighting how this project has gone beyond economic liberalisation and towards a bolder social transformation. As an ideology, neoliberalism projects an end-point not simply of a market economy but of a market society. After thirty years of projects, aid disbursement, technical assistance, and conditionality, this book maps out the extent to which African states have cleaved to neoliberal directives. It suggests that neoliberal 'progress' in Africa is notably limited in spite of the resources behind it and the lack of alternatives to it.