ABSTRACT
An analysis of the poverty-oriented “new style” projects brings out the positive and negative aspects of the World Bank as a “multilateral investment model.” The Bank can be defined as a prototype public institution for politically neutral and untied investment in economic development, with its rules shaped more like those in a commercial corporation than in an intergovern-mental organization. In the Latin American middle-income countries, the people who work with the Bank have had more experience in and better professional training for borrowing or project preparation. The Bank has become a vector for the recycling of petrodollars, although it is less important than the private market in this respect. It has also become an important instrument for trying to increase the energy independence of developing countries. Even though most official development assistance is still bilateral and tied to export credits, the Bank is an investment model that “brings business.
