Reviving the Bank and Fund

The missions of both the Bank and the Fund have changed greatly since the early years. And the client base has changed greatly. It is time to change procedures to match the rhetoric about governance, corruption, and ownership to incentives that help to bring about these results. The paper offers some suggestions for shifting from the command and control arrangements to systems that encourage local officials to reform. JEL codes F1 · F34 · O19     

Electronic gatekeepers: Locking out the marketplace of ideas

The Hutchins Commission was concerned that the small minority of the people controlling the press as an instrument of mass communication could misuse their gatekeeping power. Due to new communication technologies the abundance of media outlets has increased choices available to the public far beyond anything commission members could have envisioned. This, in turn, has led to the development of a second layer of electronic gatekeepers between information originators and the public. The effect these electronic gatekeepers will have on the evolution of the press will be as great as, if not greater than, that of the human gatekeepers who were the commission's focus. This article suggests there will be an increasing equation of the public interest with what the public is interested in, a reduction in people's knowledge of public affairs and a decrease in the exposure of individuals to new ideas or ideas that contradict their existing beliefs. The article concludes by questioning whether government regulation is capable of addressing these concerns.