This is the first of two surveys of the World Development Report series. Here we focus on the discursive strategies adopted by the Reports. We begin by setting the Reports within the wider milieu of development theory and practice. Behind the pragmatic, problem-solving image that the Reports aim...

This paper aims to set the World Bank’s recent ‘Consultations with the Poor’ (CWP) exercise within the context of the broadening of definitions of poverty and ill-being and the current predilection for participatory research. The CWP exercise was intended to provide a nuanced...

The regional allocation of aid within recipient countries has been largely ignored in the aid allocation literature. We use geocoded data on the location of aid projects financed by the World Bank and the African Development Bank within a sample of 27 recipient countries to assess the claim of...

The paper presents a detailed description of IMF and World Bank conditionality and tries to explain changes in this conditionality over time as well as differences between the two institutions. Using panel data it is shown that the number of Fund conditions seem to be influenced by...

We analyse the effect of IMF and World Bank policies on the composite index of economic freedom by Gwartney et al. (2000) as well as its sub-indexes, using a panel of 85 countries observed between 1970 and 1997. With respect to the Bank, we find that the number of projects has a positive impact...