This study investigates the World Bank's use of lending and non-lending instruments to affect the policy priorities of developing countries. In a typical year, the World Bank lends more than $30 billion to its client countries. It also spends approximately $200 million on the provision of...

There is relatively little systematic evidence on the links between procurement systems and outcomes such as competition and corruption levels. This paper adds to the evidence base, using data on almost 34,000 firms from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys, in 88 countries that also have...

This paper shows that the increased policy-selectivity of aid allocations observed in recent years provides recipient countries an incentive to improve policies. The paper estimates that a change in the World Banks Country Policy and Institutional Assessment policy index from 1.5 to 2 for a...

Over the past decade, donors of foreign aid quadrupled their annual contributions to trust funds at the World Bank. This earmarking of contributions to donors' preferred recipient countries and issues has raised concerns about the alignment of trust funds with the performance-based allocations...

Some multilateral agencies implement aid projects in a broad range of sectors, with aid disbursements showing a strong overlap with those of bilateral donors. The question then arises of why do bilateral donors delegate sizable shares of their aid to non-specialized agencies for implementation?...

This study investigates the impact of World Bank development policy lending on the quality of economic policy. It finds that the quality of policy increases, but at a diminishing rate, with the cumulative number of policy loans. Similar results hold for the cumulative number of conditions...

The literature on aid and growth has not found a convincing instrumental variable to identify the causal effects of aid. This paper exploits an instrumental variable based on the fact that since 1987, eligibility for aid from the International Development Association (IDA) has been based partly...

Unbundling power generation, transmission, and distribution is not an end itself, but rather a means to achieve better performance. The key objective of the analytical framework of this paper is to explore the links between alternative market structures and performance (in terms of access,...

This paper presents new global evidence on the key determinants of public-private partnership investment in electricity generated by renewable energy based on a panel data analysis for 105 developing countries over a period of 16 years from 1993 to 2008. It aims to identify the key factors...

This paper presents new global evidence on the key determinants of public-private partnership investment in electricity transmission and distribution, based on a panel data analysis of 105 developing countries over a period of 16 years from 1993 to 2008. It aims to identify the key factors...