ABSTRACT
This study has sought to answer two fundamental questions. First, does the giving of aid confer power on the donor, in particular, power to change the recipient's economic policies? Second, has the exercise of such power as exists been of any help to the developing countries? The answer, to both questions, is 'a little, but not as much as the Bank hoped'. It will be useful to recapitulate the main steps in the book's argument at this point as a prelude to an attempt to state what lessons the experience of policy-based lending holds for policy-makers in the late 1990s and beyond.
