This study shows that in developing countries with no more than partly favorable policies toward manufactured exports, outside assistance to services that promote and support manufactured exports has had little discernible impact on exports and has rarely been effective in expanding them. The...

The author recommends using more quantitative economic analysis in appraising technical assistance loans and loan components. After giving a brief history of tecnhical assistance and the problems commonly associated with it, he describes classifications of technical assistance, proposes a new...

The authors derive a poverty-efficient allocation of aid and compare it with actual aid allocations. They build the poverty-efficient allocation in two stages. First they use new World Bank ratings of 20 different aspects of national policy to establish the current relationship between aid,...

The authors examine the allocation of foreign aid by 41 donor agencies, bilateral and multilateral. Their policy selectivity index measures the extent to which a donor's assistance is targeted to countries with sound institutions and policies, controlling for per capita income and population....

The paper is intended to provide an orientation to the past and present work of the Social Development network and a contribution to its future strategy. It presents a brief overview of the history of the Social Development network or family; it illustrates both continuity and change in the way...

There are three main approaches to analyzing the effects of aid money and aid-supported reform: before-and-after comparison; control group (simple and modified) studies; and modeling. All three approaches have been used to carry out macroeconomic analysis of policy reform. But before-and-after...

Since 1987 the Bank's operational guidelines have required President's Reports supporting structural adjustment loans (SALs) to pay particular attention to an analysis of the short term impact of the adjustment program on the poor and to measures proposed to alleviate negative effects. The...

Watson, Crawford, and Farley examine the ways in which science and technology (S&T) support poverty alleviation and economic development and how these themes have been given emphasis or short shrift in various areas of the World Bank's work. Central to their thesis is the now well-established...

The author gives examples of research recently published in professional journals that directly helped, or could help, in formulating policy advice (and perhaps even policymaking). An article by Younger (1992) was helpful in analyzing a problem in Ghana, where aid flows to government crowded out...

By using better data on German foreign direct investment (FDI) than previous studies, the author found that: (i) developing countries might attract more FDI flows by easing investment restrictions or implementing incentives - but the effect of incentives could be modest and does not justify...