Between Two Worlds

The global debt and adjustment crisis has challenged the World Bank to become the leading agency in North-South finance and development. The many dimensions of this challenge--which must be comprehensively addressed by the Bank's new president--are the subject of this important volume in the Overseas Development Council's U.S.-Third World Policy Perspectives series.The Bank's ability to design and implement a comprehensive response to global economic needs is threatened by competing objectives and uncertain priorities. Can the Bank design programs attractive to private investors that also serve the very poor? Can it emphasize efficiency while transferring technologies that maximize labor absorption? Can it aggressively condition loans on policy reforms without attracting the criticism that has accompanied IMF programs? Can it meet the needs of the 1990s with the internal organization and staff of the early 1980s?The contributors to this volume assess the role that the World Bank can play in the period ahead. They argue for new financial and policy initiatives and for new conceptual approaches to development, as well as for a restructuring of the Bank as it takes on new systematic responsibilities in the new decade.