Easterly's been busy. He's also contributed a chapter to the Center for Global Development's new book, Rescuing the World Bank. The book is an engaging read, with a number of essays from different observers on how the World Bank can better meet its core mission of poverty alleviation. Easterly writes that the World Bank needs to improve accountability for results, and also that it suffers from mission creep. He affirms some of the Bank's efforts on private sector development:
Aid can do small-scale things like the current project in the World Bank on the costs of doing business, in which you try to take specific piecemeal steps to lower the red tape of doing business in developing countries. Doing this creates opportunities for what is the real engine of development and transformation in low-income countries, which is the private sector and it’s the homegrown efforts of local people themselves, both political leaders and private sector within African countries, within low-income countries themselves.
Another CGD report out this week has advice for the African Development Bank. What about the Inter-American Development Bank? Why, yes, advice for the IDB too.
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