This study is the first independent evaluation of social fund projects by OED. It reviews the development effectiveness of social fund projects and draws implications for future Bank support to them. It responds to the interest of the World Bank's Board of Executive Directors for an independent...

Brazil entered the 1990s suffering the consequences of a lost decade of high inflation and slow growth. Between 1980 and 1990, per capita income declined in real terms, and the share of the population in extreme poverty rose from 16.5 to 19 percent -and from 36 to 42 percent in the Northeast....

Following three years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), during which over 10 percent of the population were killed or wounded, and over half of the population displaced, a peace agreement, the Dayton Accords (DA), was negotiated in November 1995. The DA acknowledged the bitter ethnic...

Since 1989 the transition countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) have undertaken massive reforms of their economic systems, transforming institutions, processes, attitudes, and fundamental concepts of individual and organizational behavior. This report uses the benefit of 20/20 hindsight to...

The original mission of the CGIAR was a strategic, science-based focus on increasing "the pile of rice on the plates of food-short consumers," as characterized by a former chairman. It was to use the best science in advanced countries to develop technologies for the benefit of food deficit...

This OED report finds that the Bank has made progress on the environment, and notes that its commitments were not accompanied by precise goals and performance monitoring. It advances explanations of why things have turned out this way. It offers recommendations which focus on how to restore the...

This 2004 Annual Review of Development Effectiveness (ARDE): The World Bank's Contributions to Poverty Reduction, looks at the growth and poverty reduction experience of client countries. It assesses the extent to which Bank interventions have contributed to growth and poverty reduction and the...

This book finds that there is a strong positive association between including social development themes and project success. The Bank's social development resources are deployed in ways that are not optimally supportive of its social development goals, however. The study found that the Bank's...

This report addresses the issue of what publicly-supported programs and external assistance from the Bank and other agencies can do to accelerate attainment of targets such as reducing infant mortality by two-thirds. The evidence presented here relates to Bangladesh, a country which has made...

This evaluation assesses the relevance and effectiveness of Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa, over the past 10 years. It draws on studies of Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Mozambique; aggregate assessments of country strategies and operations across the Bank's...