This evaluation provides an independent assessment of lines of credit financed by the World Bank during the period FY93-FY03. It is the first of a two-part evaluation looking at Bank support to the financial sector. The second part focuses on Bank support for financial sector reform. This volume...

Good public procurement practices are a major determinant of the effectiveness of public expenditure. On behalf of their citizens, governments typically spend as much as 5-20 percent of their gross domestic product on procurement of goods and services, and effective procurement policies enable...

The Independent Evaluation of International Finance Corporations (IFC's) Development Results (IEDR) is the annual flagship report of the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG). It reviews IFC's effectiveness in supporting private sector development and its contributions to economic growth and...

This evaluation provides lessons that could inform IFC's approach to the deployment of the blended finance instrument. Blended finance is a risk mitigation tool for investments that find it difficult to attract commercial funding. Blended finance refers to the combination of concessional and...

More than a decade has passed since the global economic and financial crisis rocked the world. A clear lesson that emerged from it was the importance of identifying and addressing country-specific vulnerabilities ex ante to build resilience when a shock occurs. The 2020 global economic and...

This book evaluates the relevance and effectiveness of Bank assistance to China since the early 1990s. The author finds that the Bank has made important contributions to economic reform, poverty reduction, infrastructure development, and environmental protection, but has fallen short of its...

The goal of Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs), introduced in early 2001 under World Bank Interim guidelines, was to help countries implement comprehensive, country-owned development strategies to promote growth, improve social conditions, and reduce poverty. PRSCs were intended to ease...

The current global financial and economic crises are likely to put enormous pressure on governments to respond with immediate measures and to undertake far-reaching reforms in the medium term, requiring a substantial increase in donor support. To protect the poor and enhance benefits to them,...

This paper reviews recent impact evaluations of interventions and programs to improve child anthropometric outcomes- height, weight, and birth weight-with an emphasis on both the findings and the limitations of the literature and on understanding what might happen in a non-research setting. It...

This evaluation, which covers the period fiscal 2002-08, finds that the Bank made progress in gender integration, compared with an earlier evaluation by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) on gender covering the period fiscal 1990-99. Gender integration into Bank support increased both in...