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     

Comparative Vigilance

A growing body of literature suggests that courts and juriesare inclined toward division of liability between two strictlynon-negligent or "vigilant" parties. In this paper, we explorethe economic efficiency of liability rules based on comparativevigilance. We devise rules that are efficient and that rewardvigilance. Commonly used liability rules have discontinuousliability shares. We develop a liability rule, which we callthe "super-symmetric rule," that is both efficient and continuous,that is based on comparative negligence when both parties arenegligent and on comparative vigilance when both parties arevigilant, and that is always responsive to increased care.