Abouharb, M. Rodwan; Duchesne, Erick. 2019. “Economic Development and the World Bank.” Social Sciences. 8:5: 156. Replication Dataset & Do File (Zip).
We contribute to the research stream examining the effects of World Bank lending programs
on economic growth in developing economies. We contend that it is important to distinguish between
the short-term effects and extended exposure of countries to these lending programs and also to assess
the Bank’s (late 1990s) reforms to improve the effectiveness of these programs in recipient countries
to assess whether program lending has any positive impacts on economic growth. Our comparative
cross-national findings using instrumental variables analysis to control for endogeneity between
program participation and economic growth demonstrate that both the short-term and longer
exposure to program lending worsens economic growth. We find no evidence that World Bank
reforms improved economic growth rates in the post-reform (1999–2009) period. Our findings are
robust to changes in model specifications and estimation techniques. Future research should examine
whether these reforms had beneficial impacts in other societal areas affected by program lending.
