World Bank Chastised
    By Alain Faujas
    Le Monde

    Tuesday 02 January 2007

    An audit of the research it effected between 1998 and 2005 ordered by World Bank Vice President and Chief Economist François Bourguignon and made public Christmas Eve has just inflicted a severe hiding on the Bank.

    Led by Abhijit Banerjee (MIT), Angus Deaton (Princeton), Nora Lustig (UNDP) and Ken Rogoff (Harvard), twenty-five academics analyzed a 180-product sample of the 4,000 articles, books and reports issued during the period.

    The Bank's research serves as reference for other international organizations, governments, and even public opinion. It analyzes the impact of health, education, demography, agriculture, infrastructure, investment, good governance, etc. on economic and social development.

    The audit group deems that 61 percent of the Bank's studies are of superior quality and contribute to the knowledge of phenomena that facilitate or hamper poor countries' growth. On the other hand, the remaining research draws acute reproach. The experts deem that "that research was used to defend the Bank's policies, without demonstrating balance in the presentation of the facts, nor the requisite detachment." They deplore the Bank's confusion of research and special pleading on its own behalf.

    They cite a study that trumpets that "growth is good for the poor," although its conclusions were "fragile and dubious." They criticize the treatment and "haphazard" sorting of statistical data, as well as the mediocrity of the Internet site that allows that data to be consulted. They deplore the routine quality of studies in the absence of any controls as well as the studies' attempt to please everyone by minimizing disputes.

    Among the remedies advocated by the experts, I should mention refocusing the studies and limiting their number, since, with a research budget of 25.3 million dollars (2.5% of the Bank's budget), it's not possible to lay claim to exhaustive coverage. The Bank is also advised to improve the level of its recruitment and monitoring of the researchers' work.

    Finally, the experts say it would be desirable for the Bank's researchers to combine their work with that being done in developing countries. That's to avoid repeating the absurdity of a statistical system devoted to poverty in South Africa and effected without either the local academics or the Pretoria government's specialists having had anything to do with it.

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    The report itself, Evaluation of Bank Research, is available here.