This book is part of a larger effort undertaken by the World Bank to understand the development experience of the 1990s, an extraordinary eventful decade. Each of the project's three volumes serves a different purpose. A volume titled Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform provides comprehensive analysis of the decade's development experience, while Development Challenges in the 1990s: Leading Policymakers Speak from Experience offers insights on the practical concerns faced by policymakers. This volume, At the Frontlines of Development: Reflections from the World Bank considers the operational implications of the decade for the World Bank as an institution. At the Frontlines of Development contains a collection of essays by former World Bank Country Directors which recount their experiences, both as managers of the World Bank's portfolio in global economic hotspots of the 1990s as well as throughout their careers in development. These essays detail how China and India lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, while Russia collapsed; how Bosnia and Herzegovina and Mozambique remade their war-ravaged economies; and how Thailand, Turkey and Argentina fell into financial crisis; among other stories of development in the 1990s. This volume is unique and remarkable because the stories are told in first person by those who were there to witness them. The former Country Directors offer their candid assessments of what succeeded, what failed, and what lessons emerged. From an operational standpoint, this book serves an internal mentoring function for current and future World Bank Country Directors, and provides external audiences with a glimpse of the human face behind World Bank operations.
