There is almost never just one way to measure an economic variable, and poverty is no exception. Judgments are required about the best method—given the data available—at virtually every step, starting with the design and processing of the underlying household survey data. The judgments made should be explicit and subjected to independent review. In that spirit, Deaton (this issue) provides a us...

One of the most important and most overlooked development assets is the capacity of poor people to mobilize and organize for collective action. 111 Membership-based organizations and networks of poor people have emerged in many places in response to the common needs of specific groups: rural producers, home-based workers, slum dwellers, indigenous people, and landless workers, among others. Poo...

© 2000 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK Lant Pritchett is with the East Asia and the Pacific Country Units at the World Bank. His e-mail address is [email protected]. The author would like to thank William Easterly, Ross Levine, Deon Filmer, Dani Rodrik, and the participants at seminars at the World Bank and the Massachusetts Institute of Technol...

We thank Eduardo Lora for comments on a previous version. Arturo Galindo is an economist in the Research Department of the Inter-American Development Bank, Margaret Miller at the Corporate Strategy Group and Office of the Chief Economist of the World Bank. The views expressed in this document are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Inter-American Development Bank or the W...

In this thesis we examine the cofinancing of World Bank projects with commercial banks in the context of the current international debt crisis. After describing the institutions involved, with particular emphasis on the World Bank, we review the history of cofinancing with commercial banks. We then describe the controversy that has existed between the World Bank and commercial banks and present...

The World Bank Group consists of five organizations: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The World Bank operates under the authority of a Bo...

The World Bank Group has recently formulated new goals for ending extreme poverty and for boosting shared prosperity. The main elements of this new vision were laid out in the document entitled " A Common Vision for the World Bank Group, " which was discussed by the Bank's Executive Directors on March 21, 2013. This document sets a target to reduce extreme poverty to 3 percent by 2030, and to p...