<italic>Development economics in its early years created the image of a fierce fight between advocates of contrasting theories or approaches—“balanced growth” vs. “unbalanced growth,” or “program loans” vs. “project loans.” This view has the merit of highlighting such conflicts in...</italic>

The paper aims to describe the contribution of four Harvard economists to the interpretation of the Great Depression and the policy decision making from 1933 to 1938. Lauchlin B. Currie, Jacob Viner, John H. Williams, Harry D. White, eminent scholars in the field of monetary and international...

Since its birth in 1944, the World Bank has had a strong focus on development projects. Yet, it did not have a project evaluation unit until the early 1970s. An early attempt to conceptualize project appraisal had been made in the 1960s by Albert Hirschman, whose undertaking raised high...

We explore the foreign economic policy activities of Arthur I. Bloomfield, a prominent economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the 1940s and the 1950s. During the cold war, Bloomfield headed several missions to South East Asia, assisting local authorities in shaping new foreign...

According to most reconstructions of development debates, poverty and social issues were not part of the development agenda until the late 1960s. In contrast, this article shows that development practitioners and institutions were already addressing poverty and social issues in the late 1940s...

This book covers the early years of the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the World Bank when it first confronted the issue of development as a fundamental part of its mission. The book is mainly concerned with how the Bank interpreted its mission...

Until the late 1960s, the World Bank presented itself as an institution devoted to making sound and directly productive project loans. Yet, during its early years, discussions took place within the Bank regarding the possibility of issuing different types of loans, namely (i) loans aimed at...

Until the late 1960s, the World Bank presented itself as an institution devoted to making sound and directly productive project loans. This paper brings together historical analysis and theories of organization development to reveal that the Bank was unwilling to lend for housing programs not...

Until the late 1960s, the World Bank presented itself as an institution devoted to sound and directly productive project loans. Yet, during its very early years, some discussions developed inside the Bank regarding the possibility of issuing different types of loans, namely loans which –...