ABSTRACT
The World Bank along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) play a crucial role in determining how much capital developing countries will receive from external sources. Thus, it is not surprising that there has been much controversy over the lending practices of these international financial institutions. Most of the controversy has been centered upon the fairness of the structural adjustment conditions imposed by both institutions upon loan recipients and the effects of the loans on economic development. In recent years, scholars have also focused attention on country characteristics used by the Bank to determine which governments will receive loans and which will not. In this chapter, the factors that increased or decreased the probability of a country’s government receiving a World Bank structural adjustment loan (SAL) in the 20-year period from 1981-2000 are identified. The governments of 161 countries of the world are included in the analysis. This is the first large-n, comparative study of the selection criteria of the World Bank. The results have both theoretical and practical importance.
