How Successful Is World Bank Lending For Structural Adjustment

For a sample of 75 countries during the period 1976-86, there is a significant association between participation in a World Bank adjustment lending program and more rapid economic growth, a more positive current account as a percentage of gross national product (GNP), and a higher rate of domestic inflation.

Book is definitive in its area and one of the most significant titles in development economics in the 1990's Sold in total nearly 3,000 copies of the first edition Authors are very prestigious: Mosley is full Professor at Reading, Toye is Head of the prestigious Institute of Development Studies

Most of the Bank's adjustment lending programs have increased the growth rate of GDP, the ratio of exports to GDP, and the ratios of saving to GDP. But the average ratio of investment to GDP is lower than 1970s levels. Sometimes unsustainable levels of public investment in the 1970s had led to economic crisis, and investment had to become more efficient. To restore growth, the challenge of the 1990s is to have good economic policies and to create the conditions needed to increase investment-to-GDP ratios.

World Bank Discussion Paper No. 290. Draws on the lessons of experience of developing countries in decentralizing infrastructure and provides new empirical evidence on the quantitative and qualitative effects of decentralization. This collection of five papers highlights the lessons of the World Bank's research and experience on the linkages between infrastructure and decentralization. The paper provides: - A summary of the lessons from World Bank experience, giving a general review of the importance of the decentralization of infrastructure - A review of the institutional aspects of decentralization and their implications for policy design - An empirical assessment of the consequences of decentralization for expenditure levels and performance in infrastructure - An outline for a research agenda on decentralization in light of recent developments in the theory of the firm. - The authors conclude that some degree of decentralization will improve performance in certain areas of infrastructure such as roads and electricity.

There is some evidence that IMF and World Bank adjustment lending smooths consumption for the poor, reducing the rise in poverty for any given contraction of the economy but also reducing the fall in poverty for any given expansion. Adjustment lending plays a similar role as inequality, reducing poverty's sensitivity to the economy's aggregate growth rate. Structural adjustment - as measured by the number of adjustment loans from the IMF and World Bank - reduces the growth elasticity of poverty reduction. Easterly finds no evidence for structural adjustment having a direct effect on growth.The poor benefit less from output expansion in countries with many adjustment loans than they do in countries with few such loans. By the same token, the poor suffer less from an output contraction in countries with many adjustment loans than in countries with few. Why would this be? One hypothesis is that adjustment lending is countercyclical in ways that smooth consumption for the poor. There is evidence that some policy variables under adjustment lending are countercyclical, but no evidence that the cyclical component of those policy variables affects poverty. Easterly speculates that the poor may be ill placed to take advantage of new opportunities created by structural adjustment reforms, just as they may suffer less from the loss of old opportunities in sectors that were artificially protected before reform.Poverty's lower sensitivity to growth under adjustment lending is bad news when an economy expands and good news when it contracts. These results could be interpreted as giving support to either the critics or the supporters of structural adjustment programs.This paper - a product of Macroeconomics and Growth, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the effect of growth on poverty. The author may be contacted at [email protected].

Soon after its declaration of independence, Lithuania launched a program of market-based economic reforms that achieved remarkable results. However, a banking crisis erupted in January 1996, driven by a combination of ineffective bank supervision, poor bank practices, and deep-rooted sectoral imbalances. With financial support from the World Bank, Lithuanian authorities embarked on a broad economic reform program with two immediate objectives: the resolution of the banking system's operational and undercapitalization problems, and a reduction in the most severe imbalances in the economy. Volume I (see ordering information below) distills findings and conclusions and builds a policy action plan for fast stable growth. Volume II contains a collection of twelve policy notes that provide the technical analysis behind that plan. Also available: Volume II/Analytical Backgroung(ISBN 0-8213-4327-0) Stock no. 14327.