If the new World Bank President calls …

International Economy, The, Spring, 2005

Incentives, incentives, incentives.

DANIEL MITTLER

Political advisor to Greenpeace International, based in Berlin

I have only one word of simple advice for Mr. Wolfowitz: Resign!

JOSEPH S. NYE, JR.

Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University and author of The Power Game: A Washington Novel

Learn from your Pentagon experience. In Iraq, you had good intentions, but we judge leaders by the means they choose and the consequences that ensue.

After you testified that the chief of staff of the Army was wildly wrong in his estimate that winning the peace in Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops, the consequences that followed were unnecessarily costly. Supporting debt relief for poor countries will be an easy way to show your good intentions fight at the start, but this time pay closer attention to the means if you want good consequences to follow. If you abide by the British advice that rich governments should add real resources towards cancelling the debts, the results will be better. If you follow the advice of your former Administration colleagues and make the Bank cancel the debts out of its own resources, you will again sound good while producing damaging consequences for the institution you are trying to lead.

MAKOTO UTSUMI

President and CEO, Japan Credit Rating Agency

First, the World Bank should go back to basics. It is a bank. Poverty reduction is among its most important objectives, but the Bank should not be a mere official development assistance donor. To lessen poverty, enriching the developing economies is also necessary. Improving infrastructure and developing energy supplies should continue to be the Important responsibilities of the World Bank's lending.

Second, since middle-income countries, except China and Thailand, still cannot attract capital from the market at conditions equivalent to those of the World Bank, it might consider expanding its lending to this group of countries. This would enable the Bank to get the additional margin to expand aid to the poorest countries.

Third, the internal resource allocation toward the country level should be further promoted. Appoint economists who know and understand a country's political economy and abandon economists just working on papers.

Finally, stop catering to each voice in the nongovernmental organizations and academia. Making a list of the slogans such as "faith initiative," "cultural heritage initiative," etc. does not make sense. We expect that the new president will wield strong leadership in defining development strategy with clear priorities.

LIONEL BARBER

U.S. Managing Editor, Financial Times

Every new head of an organization is tempted to disregard or downplay the work of his or her predecessors. You must choose your own path but you should not ignore Jim Wolfensohn's greatest legacy: the World Bank's campaign against corruption.

The cancer of corruption has long hampered the Bank's struggle to tackle poverty in the developing world. Almost a decade ago, Wolfensohn--helped by NGOs such as Transparency International--raised public consciousness on this vital issue. He showed how Nigeria, with all its oil resources, could be a rich country full of poor people.