I am a fan of Sebastian Mallaby’s The World’s Banker, a biography of Jim Wolfensohn’s tenure at the World Bank. Jeffrey Hooke’s The Dinosaur Among Us: The World Bank and its Path to Extinction is the next excellent book on this institution. Do you want to know exactly why the Bank doesn’t do better, explained in language of property rights and incentives?
I read Hooke as placing the final blame on the very active role of the Board in the Bank’s regular operations. The incentive is to have the Bank lend lots and create contracts which funnel money back to corporate interests in the U.S. and Western Europe. As a result Bank loans don’t embody much accountability and the loan or aid recipients can game the system and turn it toward their own political ends and away from growth enhancement.
Contrary to what the title of the book might imply, Hooke wishes to reform rather than eliminate the Bank. This is not "one of those libertarian rants," and it can be read with profit by all. Hooke has spent six years working at the Bank and he knows his material very well.
And if you think, as I do, that most books should not exceed 100 pages, you will like this one all the more. Recommended.
Depending from which side of a mirror one looks, a views tends to band on one or another side. I haven’t read the Hooke’s book, and do not want to make any early judgments,but this summary reflects very shallow analysis on relations in the Bank.
Professor, I would like to ask for your opinion about the relations between Board and Management, in quasi political institutions? Do those institutions tend to be Board led or Management led? What we perceive, doesn’t have to reflect the reality. It is dangerous to generalize, but I would appreciate your opinion…
Did you see this from the WSJ the other day?
The Amateur Economist & Curmudgeon Blog
“Africa’s poverty trap is well covered in the media, since it features such economists as Angelina Jolie, Madonna, Bono and Brad Pitt. But even Bill Gates, at an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2007, expressed indifference to Africa’s stagnant GDP, since ‘you can’t eat GDP.’ Mr. Gates apparently missed the economics class that listed the components of GDP, such as food.”
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/africas-poverty-trap-and-bono.html
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