Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, the IMF, and the Developing World

Edited by Doug Bandow and Ian Vasquez

Since World War II, it has been widely believed that underdeveloped countries can not become prosperous without billions of dollars from wealthy countries. After 40 years, what is there to show for this strategy? Not much. Perpetuating Poverty is an eye-opening review of the scandalous record of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The startling findings include:

India has received the most foreign aid of any country since 1951--about $55 billion--but today 40 percent of its population is in poverty.
After two decades of development planning financed largely by the IMF and World Bank, sub-Saharan Africa today has a lower per capita income than it did when the aid started.
While the industrial nations support foreign aid, they also maintain trade restrictions against poor countries that reduce those nations' incomes.

Like a beacon, Perpetuating Poverty points the way toward abolishing the destructive bureaucracies of the World Bank and IMF and putting in their place policies based on economic liberty--for the good of the developed and developing worlds alike. Distributed to the trade by National Book Network.

Doug Bandow is a syndicated columnist, the author of several books, and senior fellow at the Cato Institute. Ian Vasquez is assistant director of the Cato Institute's Project on Global Economic Liberty.

"This book deals with a highly important subject. The authors are the best in the field."
-Peter Bauer
"These studies dissect the role of the Bank and Fund in promoting politicization of economic life, in inhibiting private enterprise and so delaying the emergence from poverty."
-Alan Walters

This book contains the papers presented at the Cato Institute conference, "Multilateral Aid: Fostering Independence or Addiction?," on May 8, 1991.

1994/320pp./$25.95 cloth ISBN: 1-882577-06-X/$15.95 paper ISBN: 1-882577-07-8

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