IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/revint/v7y2012i4p343-368.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The World Bank’s publication record

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Ravallion
  • Adam Wagstaff

Abstract

The World Bank claims to be a “knowledge bank,” but do its knowledge products influence development thinking, or is the Bank merely a proselytizer? The World Bank is a prolific publisher; for example, it has published more journal articles in economics than any university except Harvard. But what about their impact on development thinking? Using citation data from Google Scholar it is hard to discern more than a negligible impact for a great many Bank publications. However, a sizeable minority of its journal articles and books have been highly cited. Compared to leading research universities and other international institutions, the Bank’s ranking in terms of widely-used citation-based indices is no lower than for its journal article counts. This suggests that the Bank’s research does much more than proselytize. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Ravallion & Adam Wagstaff, 2012. "The World Bank’s publication record," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 343-368, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:revint:v:7:y:2012:i:4:p:343-368
    DOI: 10.1007/s11558-011-9139-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11558-011-9139-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11558-011-9139-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christian Zimmermann, 2013. "Academic Rankings with RePEc," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-32, December.
    2. van de Walle, Dominique & Mu, Ren, 2007. "Fungibility and the flypaper effect of project aid: Micro-evidence for Vietnam," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 667-685, November.
    3. Chen, Shaohua & Mu, Ren & Ravallion, Martin, 2009. "Are there lasting impacts of aid to poor areas?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 512-528, April.
    4. Pranab Bardhan, 2003. "Journal publication in economics: a view from the periphery," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(488), pages 332-337, June.
    5. Jishnu Das & Quy-Toan Do, 2020. "US and them - The geography of academic research," Vox eBook Chapters, in: Sebastian Galliani & Ugo Panizza (ed.), Publishing and Measuring Success in Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 111-114, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    6. Dollar, David & Levin, Victoria, 2005. "Sowing and reaping: institutional quality and project outcomes in developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3524, The World Bank.
    7. Gavin, Michael & Rodrik, Dani, 1995. "The World Bank in Historical Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 329-334, May.
    8. Wagstaff, Adam, 2011. "Fungibility and the impact of development assistance: Evidence from Vietnam's health sector," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 62-73, January.
    9. Gilbert, Christopher & Powell, Andrew & Vines, David, 1999. "Positioning the World Bank," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(459), pages 598-633, November.
    10. Dollar, David & Levin, Victoria, 2006. "The Increasing Selectivity of Foreign Aid, 1984-2003," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(12), pages 2034-2046, December.
    11. van Eck, Nees Jan & Waltman, Ludo, 2008. "Generalizing the h- and g-indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 263-271.
    12. Heckelman, Jac C. & Knack, Stephen & Rogers, F. Halsey, 2011. "Crossing the threshold : an analysis of IBRD graduation policy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5531, The World Bank.
    13. Ravallion, Martin & Wagstaff, Adam, 2010. "On measuring scientific influence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5375, The World Bank.
    14. Stephen Knack & F. Rogers & Jac Heckelman, 2012. "Crossing the threshold: A positive analysis of IBRD graduation policy," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 145-176, June.
    15. Silvia Marchesi & Emanuela Sirtori, 2011. "Is two better than one? The effects of IMF and World Bank interaction on growth," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 287-306, September.
    16. Wane, Waly, 2004. "The quality of foreign aid : country selectivity or donors incentives?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3325, The World Bank.
    17. Glenn Ellison, 2002. "The Slowdown of the Economics Publishing Process," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(5), pages 947-993, October.
    18. Deininger, Klaus & Squire, Lyn & Basu, Swati, 1998. "Does Economic Analysis Improve the Quality of Foreign Assistance?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 12(3), pages 385-418, September.
    19. Thomas Flores & Irfan Nooruddin, 2009. "Financing the peace: Evaluating World Bank post-conflict assistance programs," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 1-27, March.
    20. Christopher Barrett & Aliakbar Olia & Dee Von Bailey, 2000. "Subdiscipline-specific journal rankings: whither Applied Economics?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(2), pages 239-252.
    21. van Eck, N.J.P. & Waltman, L., 2008. "Generalizing the h- and g-indices," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2008-049-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    22. Martin Ravallion & Adam Wagstaff, 2011. "On measuring scholarly influence by citations," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(1), pages 321-337, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zapp, Mike, 2017. "The World Bank and Education: Governing (through) knowledge," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 1-11.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rodrigo Dorantes-Gilardi & Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez & Diana Terrazas-Santamaría, 2023. "Is there a differentiated gender effect of collaboration with super-cited authors? Evidence from junior researchers in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2317-2336, April.
    2. Knack,Stephen & Parks,Bradley Christopher & Harutyunyan,Ani & DiLorenzo,Matthew, 2020. "How Does the World Bank Influence the Development Policy Priorities of Low-Income and Lower-Middle Income Countries ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9225, The World Bank.
    3. Tierney, Michael J. & Nielson, Daniel L. & Hawkins, Darren G. & Roberts, J. Timmons & Findley, Michael G. & Powers, Ryan M. & Parks, Bradley & Wilson, Sven E. & Hicks, Robert L., 2011. "More Dollars than Sense: Refining Our Knowledge of Development Finance Using AidData," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 1891-1906.
    4. Denizer, Cevdet & Kaufmann, Daniel & Kraay, Aart, 2013. "Good countries or good projects? Macro and micro correlates of World Bank project performance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 288-302.
    5. Schreiber, Michael, 2013. "A case study of the arbitrariness of the h-index and the highly-cited-publications indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 379-387.
    6. Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2010. "Aid and Conditionality," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4415-4523, Elsevier.
    7. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    8. Schreiber, Michael, 2013. "How to derive an advantage from the arbitrariness of the g-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 555-561.
    9. Limodio, Nicola, 2011. "The success of infrastructure projects in low-income countries and the role of selectivity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5694, The World Bank.
    10. M. Rodwan Abouharb & Erick Duchesne, 2019. "Economic Development and the World Bank," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-30, May.
    11. Vîiu, Gabriel-Alexandru, 2016. "A theoretical evaluation of Hirsch-type bibliometric indicators confronted with extreme self-citation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 552-566.
    12. Deming Lin & Tianhui Gong & Wenbin Liu & Martin Meyer, 2020. "An entropy-based measure for the evolution of h index research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2283-2298, December.
    13. Waltman, L. & van Eck, N.J.P., 2009. "A Taxonomy of Bibliometric Performance Indicators Based on the Property of Consistency," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2009-014-LIS, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
    14. Hyeonchae Yang & Woo-Sung Jung, 2015. "A strategic management approach for Korean public research institutes based on bibliometric investigation," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 1437-1464, July.
    15. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2010. "The h index research output measurement: Two approaches to enhance its accuracy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 407-414.
    16. Cadot, Olivier & Fernandes, Ana M. & Gourdon, Julien & Mattoo, Aaditya, 2015. "Are the benefits of export support durable? Evidence from Tunisia," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 310-324.
    17. Jishnu Das & Quy-Toan Do, 2020. "US and them - The geography of academic research," Vox eBook Chapters, in: Sebastian Galliani & Ugo Panizza (ed.), Publishing and Measuring Success in Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 1, pages 111-114, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    18. Langlotz, Sarah & Potrafke, Niklas, 2019. "Does development aid increase military expenditure?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 735-757.
    19. Arnab Acharya & Melisa Martínez-Álvarez, 2012. "Aid Effectiveness in the Health Sector," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-069, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Martin Ravallion, 2013. "Knowledgeable bankers? The demand for research in World Bank operations," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 1-29, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bibliometrics; World Bank; Citations; h-index; Journals; Google Scholar; O19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:revint:v:7:y:2012:i:4:p:343-368. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.