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| World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer resigned over bank mistreating Chile |
| 2018-01-25 |
| [WSJ] World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer resigned Wednesday, two weeks after apologizing to the nation of Chile for the way it was treated in one of the institution’s flagship reports on business competitiveness. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced the departure in a memo posted on the international development organization’s intranet and viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The abrupt departure follows a Journal article two weeks ago in which Mr. Romer raised concerns about the extent to which repeated changes to the methodology of the World Bank’s “Doing Business” report had hurt Chile’s rankings over several years. Mr. Romer had expressed concern about the potential for political motivations in the shifting rankings, and numbers subsequently published on his blog showed that Chile’s ranking had slid sharply due to methodology changes for the first three years of Michelle Bachelet’s presidency. Chile’s ranking changed almost entirely because of the way the World Bank had altered its methodology, and not because of changes in Chile’s business environment relative to that of other nations. Without the Bank’s methodology changes, Chile would have dropped two places in the rankings, Mr. Romer’s numbers showed. With the changes, Chile’s ranking declined by 23 places. Not all World Bank officials shared Mr. Romer’s concerns. Chief Executive Officer Kristalina Georgieva said in a letter to Chile’s finance minister last week that Mr. Romer’s comments were “unfortunate,” and she wrote, “we do not have any evidence to support the notion that the methodology is skewed to disfavor Chile or that any of the changes in the methodology were conducted for any other than technical reasons.” In a follow-up blog post, Mr. Romer said that he hadn’t “seen any sign of manipulation” and “I’m sorry that in my attempt at promoting clarity, I myself was not clear.” The World Bank has announced that there will be an independent external audit of the competitiveness report, a move welcomed by skeptics of the report. “Aside from obvious questions raised by Paul Romer’s resignation, serious concerns remain around the ‘Doing Business’ report,” said Nadia Daar, head of Oxfam International’s Washington, D.C., office. “Hopefully the next chief economist will be given the mandate to bring coherence and fairness to this ranking.” Mr. Kim’s memo didn’t cite a specific reason for Mr. Romer’s departure, saying only that Mr. Romer “is an accomplished economist and insightful individual, and we have had many good discussions on geopolitical issues, urbanization, and the future of work. I appreciated Paul’s frankness and honesty, and I know he regrets the circumstances of his departure.” Alejandro Guillier, the Chilean left-leaning senator who lost in the nation’s recent December election, said the changes were a “betrayal of public faith.” The World Bank’s board of executive directors issued a statement expressing confidence in the Bank’s research but also expressing “regret and concern about the impact on Chile.” |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #3 slid sharply due to methodology changes for the first three years of Michelle Bachelet’s presidency. This is so typical. Anyone care to rely on the methodology behind the governments economic numbers? I believe cooking the books is a time honored tradition, it all depends on what the recipe calls for. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2018-01-25 09:45 |
| #2 What do you mean? the issue is leftists(including Paul Romer) getting a bad rap and protesting it. As you can see even the WSJ suck to leftist tit promotting Oxfam, an organisation that wants to spread famine in the world. |
| Posted by: Thromble Spawn of the Apes4815 2018-01-25 01:46 |
| #1 That is a good Nation. Screwing with it is just wrong. In other news, I want to hear about Exxons un-paid tab in Chad |
| Posted by: newc 2018-01-25 01:16 |