World Bank Group. "Breakthrough Leadership for the World Bank" by Jeffrey D. Sachs. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space NEW YORK – Last month, I called for the World Bank to be led by a global development leader rather than a banker or political insider. “The Bank needs an accomplished professional who is ready to tackle the great challenges of sustainable development from day one,” I wrote. Now that US President Barack Obama has nominated Jim Kim for the post, the world will get just that: a superb development leader.
Obama has shown real leadership with this appointment. He has put development at the forefront, saying explicitly, “It’s time for a development professional to lead the world's largest development agency.” Kim’s appointment is a breakthrough for the World Bank, which I hope will extend to other global institutions as well. Kim is one of the world’s great leaders in public health. I have worked closely with Kim over the years. The US appointment is not the end of the story. I know the country well. "Obama’s Blunder at the Bank" by Jagdish Bhagwati. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space NEW YORK – The selection of a successor to Robert Zoellick as President of the World Bank was supposed to initiate a new era of open meritocratic competition, breaking the traditional hold that the United States has had on the job.
Indeed, Zoellick’s own appointment was widely regarded as “illegitimate” from that perspective. But US President Barack Obama has let the world down even more distressingly with his nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the post. To begin with, it should have been clear that a most remarkable candidate – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala – was already at hand. Moreover, Okonjo-Iweala is witty, articulate, and no wimp when it comes to taking on shoddy arguments.
What, then, does Obama’s choice tell us about the sincerity of his feminist rhetoric? In the same vein, American backing for South Korea’s Ban Ki-moon to become United Nations Secretary-General has delivered what the US wants on international economic issues. Lant Pritchett: Why Obama’s World Bank Pick Is Proving So Controversial. Outsiders must be a little mystified as to why the Obama administration’s nomination of Jim Young Kim to lead the World Bank has kicked up so much dust in the development community. I suspect the casual observer thinks: “Such a nice man, a doctor devoted to HIV/AIDS and to the poorest in the poorest places. Why the fuss?” But picking a new World Bank head is a little like picking a new Pope. The process isn’t just about the individual candidates for the position, but about the overall direction of the faith.
And so, the controversy over Kim’s nomination is not really about Kim himself. It’s a debate about a philosophical schism in the development community. The original idea of development really gained strength with the de-colonialization that followed World War II in Asia and later in Africa. Indeed, an article of faith was that the development of the nation-state was the best and most effective route to promote the development of individuals. "What Should the World Bank Do?" by Jose Antonio Ocampo.
Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space NEW YORK – I have been honored by World Bank directors representing developing countries and Russia to be selected as one of two developing-country candidates to become the Bank’s next president. So I want to make known to the global community the principles that will guide my actions if I am elected – principles based on lessons learned from development experience. That experience has taught me that successful development is always the result of a judicious mix of market, state, and society. Trying to suppress markets leads to gross inefficiencies and loss of dynamism. Indeed, the specific mix of markets, state, and society should be the subject of national decisions adopted by representative authorities.
Development is a comprehensive process that involves economic, social, and environmental dimensions – the three pillars of sustainable development. The goal of development is greater and more equitable human welfare. "Reinventing the World Bank, Again" by Ana Palacio. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space MADRID – With three nominees now in the running to become the World Bank’s next president – Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Colombian Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo, and the United States’ nominee, Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim – this is the moment to step back and assess the Bank’s trajectory.
Unless the Bank’s next president has a clear vision of the way ahead, and the gravitas to withstand the institution’s internal pressures, he or she will be swallowed up by its complex machinery and unwieldy processes. Global attention has been focused on weighing the three candidates’ strengths and qualifications, particularly their economic and financial credentials.
The World Bank’s traditional instruments have been (and still are) low-interest loans, interest-free credits, and grants. In this context, a “knowledge bank” needs to address three challenges. "Whose World Bank?" by Joseph E. Stiglitz. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space Comments View/Create comment on this paragraph NEW YORK – US President Barack Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the presidency of the World Bank has been well received – and rightly so, especially given some of the other names that were bandied about. In Kim, a public-health professor who is now President of Dartmouth College and previously led the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department, the United States has put forward a good candidate. But the candidate’s nationality, and the nominating country – whether small and poor or large and rich – should play no role in determining who gets the job.
Comments View/Create comment on this paragraph The World Bank’s 11 executive directors from emerging and developing countries have put forward two excellent candidates, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria and Jose Antonio Ocampo of Colombia. I have worked closely with both of them. "Who Should Lead the World Bank?" by Devesh Kapur. Exit from comment view mode.
Click to hide this space WASHINGTON, DC – Robert Zoellick will depart in June as President of the World Bank, once again raising the thorny issue of leadership of the Bretton Woods twins (the Bank and the International Monetary Fund). At their birth, John Maynard Keynes memorably warned that if these institutions did not get good leaders they would “fall into an eternal slumber, never to waken or be heard of again in the courts and markets of Mankind.” Getting a good leader, of course, requires a careful selection process. Today, however, the world is stuck with just the opposite: a dreadfully antiquated process whereby the United States and Europe, despite their economic travails, retain a monopoly on the leadership of the Bank and the IMF, respectively. There is grudging agreement that this system should change. The Bank’s major shareholders also face a stark choice. 5 Ways Jim Yong Kim Can Save the World Bank - By Vishnu Sridharan.
Jim Yong Kim, selected as the World Bank's new leader on Monday, has his work cut out for him. Sure, the bank has helped halve the poverty in the developing world over the past two decades -- part of the first Millennium Development Goals -- but progress in South Asia has dwarfed that in Africa, and 1 billion people will still live below the poverty line by 2015. And there's more bad news for Kim: The World Bank's narrow economic approach to poverty eradication simply will not work today, because the root causes of certain types of poverty are as structural as they are economic. This means the global health expert and former Dartmouth College president will have to think about international development in innovative, outside-the-box ways.
Here are five ideas that Kim could implement to make the bank more effective in its mission to "help reduce poverty:" 1. Forget about growth Nearly 300 million people have escaped extreme poverty [as a result of economic growth]. 2. 3. 4. 5. "The World Bank’s Wrong Choice" by Jagdish Bhagwati. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space NEW YORK – The selection of the American nominee Jim Yong Kim as President of the World Bank, over Nigeria’s finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who was overwhelmingly regarded as a vastly superior candidate, is impossible to condone but easy to explain.
It also points to serious dangers for the unfinished task of development. The selection process suffered from several inequities and non-transparent features that undermined the United States’ claim to the contrary. Indeed, those claims were of a piece with the linguistic obfuscations that dominate American public debate: just as carpet bombing was called “pacification” during the Vietnam War, today illegal immigrants are called “undocumented aliens.” Thus, the rollout of the American propaganda machine for Kim, who traveled to many capitals worldwide with US Treasury support and promises of American largesse, surely biased the vote against Okonjo-Iweala. World Bank Pushes for 'Green Accounting' by Nations.