The River of Accountability Mechanisms: Then and Now

In 1993, the river of international accountability mechanisms (IAMs) commenced from its source – the World Bank Inspection Panel (The Panel). In its journey the river was fed by the tributaries of similar accountability mechanisms from other development institutions, including four regional development banks – the Inter-American Development Bank in 1994, the Asian Development Bank in 1995, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in 2003, and the African Development Bank in 2006. It also welcomed other entities – bilateral institutions like Japan Bank for International Cooperation (2003) and Proparco (2018), United Nations Development Program (2014) and other organizations like the Green Climate Fund (2017) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (2018)

Why Reform Fails: The ‘Politics of Policies’ in Costa Rican Telecommunications Liberalization

As the 'Washington Consensus' reforms are losing momentum in Latin America, the Inter- American Development Bank (IDB) is calling for shifting the focus from the content of policy choices to the political process of their implementation. As this paper studies the paradigmatic case of telecommunications reform in Costa Rica it underscores the importance of these 'politics of policies'. The analysis finds, however, that the failure of repeated liberalization initiatives was not only due to policy-makers' errors in steering the project through 'the messy world of politics' (IDB); instead, as liberalization remained unpopular, policy content indeed mattered, and only the interaction of both explains the outcome. Particular attention is drawn to the political feed-back effects, as the failed reform, precisely because it had been backed by bi-partisan support, became a catalyst for the disintegration of the country's long-standing two-party system.Liberalization, privatization, telecommunications, public enterprises, Costa Rica, development model, Inter-American Development Bank

The politics of loan pricing in multilateral development banks

Chris Humphrey, who received his PhD from the Department of International Development in 2013, has published an article in the most recent issue of Review of International Political Economy (2014, 21:3, 611-639) analyzing the political factors that shape the price of loans offered by three multilateral development banks (MDBs)—the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and the Andean Development Corporation (CAF)

The Business of Development: Trends in Lending by Multilateral Development Banks to Latin America, 1980-2009

In this paper we investigate how country shareholding arrangements affect the lending of multilateral development banks (MDBs) under different economic conditions and over time. To do so, we consider three different types of MDBs - one dominated by non-borrowers (the World Bank), another controlled by borrowing countries (the Corporación Andina de Fomento, CAF), and a third where control is more evenly split between borrowers and non-borrowers (the Inter-American Development Bank, IADB) - and a common set of borrowing countries in Latin America. Descriptive statistics as well as econometric analysis based on seemingly unrelated regression estimation (SURE) and panel regressions indicate that the lending of the three MDBs does indeed react in a systematically different way to specific economic conditions. As a general trend, countries increasingly favor the CAF and IADB as a source of multilateral borrowing, while during crisis times World Bank lending tends to increase significantly and more strongly than lending by the CAF. IADB lending also increases very strongly during crises, but remains at a relatively high level throughout. In line with expectations based on the different shareholder arrangements, the paper also finds links between borrower government policy stances and World Bank/IADB lending, but none for the CAF. --

Preliminary analysis of development programs performance

The regional development programs promoted by the national governments and international multilateral agencies, like the World Bank and the Inter American Development Bank, are oriented to public policies under which public goods, like public services and infrastructures, are supplied to underdeveloped regions, many in Latin America. More a more evidences are pointing to the fact that success of these programs depends in a good part of externalities, which are related to the changes in the form of networking and values among the stakeholders in the territory. These externalities are defined as the Social Capita

Student experience: Big Data and the IDB

The Development Management consultancy experience gives students the opportunity to work with organisations in the real-world and on hot topics that have the potential to influence policy. As William Guicheney, Hope Kyarisiima, Louisa Tomar and Tinashe Zimani explain, their experience with the Inter-American Development Bank forced them to think less academically, and more practically

Cooperação brasileira para o desenvolvimento internacional (COBRADI): O brasil e os fundos multilaterais de desenvolvimento

According to the survey by the Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) in collaboration with the Brazilian Agency for Cooperation (ABC), Brazil contributed during the period of 2005-2009, with funds for International Development in the order of R $3.2 billion. Of the total budget for Brazilian Cooperation for International Development (COBRADI), R$ 929.7 million, almost 30%, corresponded to contributions to multilateral development funds such as the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank, the Fund for Special Operations (FSO) of the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Fund (ADF) of the African Development Bank. This paper seeks to describe the role of these institutions, their priorities, funding conditions and the Brazilian contribution throughout their participation as shareholders. Likewise, it seeks to launch for discussion a few elements present in the current debate on the quality of aid offered by those institutions that provide resources for the development of the poorest countries in the world, within highly concessional terms and to which Brazil has allocated a significant portion of their contributions during the period

Public Debt and Social Expenditure: Friends or Foes?

This paper assesses the effects of total public debt (external and domestic) on social expenditure worldwide and in Latin America using an unbalanced panel of around 50 countries for the period 1985-2003. The most robust and important finding is that higher debt ratios do reduce social expenditures, as popular opinion holds. This effect comes mostly from the stock of debt and not from debt service payments, indicating that debt displaces social expenditures not so much because it raises the debt burden, but because it reduces the room (or the appetite) for further indebtedness. Loans from multilateral organizations like the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank do not seem to ameliorate the adverse consequences of debt on social expenditures. In accordance with popular wisdom, our results indicate that defaulting on debt obligations does help to increase social expenditures. Nonetheless, Latin America is different in some respects. The adverse effects of debt and debt-interest payments are significantly stronger in the region, which makes defaults more beneficial to social expenditures. While many of these conclusions are very heterodox, their main policy implication is not; there is no better way to protect social expenditures than to avoid overindebtedness, especially in Latin America.

Economic Restructuring and Poverty/Income Inequality in Latin America

This study uses an econometric approach to evaluate whether structural reforms in Latin America contributed to poverty and income inequality over the period from 1985 to 2000. Data on structural reforms is employed from the Inter-American Development Bank‟s Structural Policy Index, and poverty and income inequality data is obtained from the World Bank‟s PovcalNet database. Using a panel data analysis with controls for GDP per-capita and political institutions, the overall openness level is found to be significantly positively related to the percent of the population living under the poverty line, the poverty gap, the Gini coefficient, the income ratio of the richest to poorest deciles of the population, and the mean log deviation. Specific reforms that are significantly positively related to poverty and/or inequality include privatizations and financial deregulation. Trade liberalization, average income, and democratic institutions demonstrate a negative, albeit weak, relationship to poverty and inequality

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF COMPETITIVENESS ON THE PERUVIAN AND CHILEAN ECONOMIES FROM A GLOBAL VIEW

Small economies, such as the Peruvian and Chilean, are immersed in the global arena of emergent economies, so evaluating them from a home based point of view (Porter, 1990) would be limited and of little use. This fact turns Porter’s national diamond framework insufficient for that purpose (Moon, Rugman and Verbeke, 1998). This paper analyzes these economies from a global view that would include local as well as foreign markets; in other words, it applies the International Competitiveness Double Diamond approach proposed by Moon, Rugman & Verbeke (1998), and Moon & Lee (2004). Information from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Economic Forum, the Inter-American Development Bank and other sources was gathered to draw up the double diamond. The empirical analyses show that Chile is more competitive globally, while Peru is locally. To sum up, the results imply that Chile is more attractive to direct foreign investment than Peru.Double diamond; global competitiveness; emergent economies; competitive pillars; competitiveness of Chile and Peru.