“The most important research project”: the World Bank and the commodity problem of international development in the 1960s

This article reconstructs the brief but intense involvement of the World Bank with the commodity problem in the 1960s. It argues that the rise of economic expertise at the Bank brought the institution to the debates on stabilising international commodity prices, creating international buffer stocks, and engaging in export diversification projects. The article shows that the Bank was much closer to proposals usually associated with organisations like UNCTAD and CEPAL and emphasised macroeconomic adjustment before Robert McNamara’s presidency and the advent of structural adjustment lending. It thus offers a revisionist analysis of the Bank’s political economy in the 1960s.