Wolfowitz and the World Bank at Bay
by Kenneth Rogoff (Harvard Professor of economics)
Project Syndicate
Will World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz’s troubles finally catalyze real change at the World Bank? Will there finally be an end to the archaic practice by which the President of the United States unilaterally appoints the head of the world’s most important development agency? [...]
I reach this conclusion even though I am sympathetic to the Bush administration’s desire to catalyze change at the Bank. I have long advocated shifting the Bank’s center of gravity from lending to outright grants, a policy that the Bush administration strongly endorses. But choosing someone with no obvious background or experience in economic development was not the way to make progress on this front. [...]
Many people, including myself, have long complained about the leadership selection process at the World Bank and the IMF. How can the Bank and the Fund continue to go around lecturing developing economies on good governance and transparency but fail to allow change in their own houses? [...]
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