Thousands of people have already voted on who they think should be the next World Bank President – add your vote now! The poll will close this Monday 27th February. Your votes may already be having an impact… bookmakers‘ odds are roughly in line with the poll results so far. Click here to vote.
We’ve been waiting with bated breath for the odds makers to get active. After all, free-market thinkers tell us that the market always has the best outcomes and sets the right prices. So surely speculation on this blog, and elsewhere in the media, will be wrong and the market will be right. Finally, yesterday, Paddy Power, an Irish bookmaker (betting site), answered the call. Of course they weren’t the only ones; John Cassidy of the New Yorker made up his own odds last weekend. But Paddy Power, with odds set by the frequency of bets, should give us the pulse of the market. Will they be right?
A review of the odds as of 21 Feb:
| Larry Summers | 4/11 |
| Susan Rice | 9/2 |
| Hillary Clinton | 9/2 |
| Kemal Dervis | 9/1 |
| Tim Geithner | 9/1 |
| Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala | 20/1 |
| Trevor Manuel | 20/1 |
| Lula da Silva | 20/1 |
| Continue reading |
With over 2,200 votes on the worldbankpresident.org poll within less than a week of its launch, the demand for developing world candidates has perhaps never been stronger.
Devesh Kapur, who co-authored the official history of the World Bank, calls the nomination process “dreadfully antiquated” in an article for the New Europe Post Online, arguing that the Bank in reality has little choice but to look to the growing emerging-market economies, rather than the indebted West, for resources. But they would then “rightly demand a greater voice in running the Bank”. Kapur lists Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, Ernest Zedillo of Mexico and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria, to name a few, as favoured developing country candidates. But he also doesn’t rule out Hilary Clinton as a credible candidate.
Robert Zoellick’s article in Foreign Affairs “Why We Still Need the World Bank” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137243/robert-b-zoellick/why-we-still-need-the-world-bank was intended to be a flattering account of the Bank’s achievements during his time as its president. Correlation is not, of course, causality, but as the World Bank’s Board gets ready to select his successor from a shortlist of three nominees, it’s time to look more closely at what’s missing. Continue reading
On Friday the Bank’s board set out its version of what a good selection process for Zoellick’s successor would be. They referenced the disappointing 2011 Board paper, and even took a few extra steps to make the process less transparent: Continue reading