The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank [Paperback]

Peter Griffiths (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 184277185X | ISBN-13: 978-1842771853 | Publication Date: September 17, 2003

What really happens when the World Bank imposes its policies on a country? This is an insider's view of one aid-made crisis. Peter Griffiths was at the interface between government and the Bank. In this day-by-day account of a mission he undertook in Sierra Leone in 1986, he tells the story of how the World Bank, obsessed with the free market, imposed a secret agreement on the government, banning all government food imports or subsidies. This is a rare and important portrait of the aid world which insiders will recognize, but of which the general public seldom gets a glimpse.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"As a World Bank employee for 16 years ... I observed some of the same bureaucratic obtuseness [Griffiths] describe[s]...so precisely and with such careful analysis of the Sierra Leone situation, I am amazed...a great book. If only there were many more people...who would write up their experiences with aid projects."
--Bill Easterly, Formerly Principal Economist at the World Bank, Now Professor of Economics at NYU, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development and Institute for International Economics

"...brilliantly elucidates the relationship between incompetence and corruption, both in Sierra Leone and the aid industry..."-The Economist

"Griffiths paints a picture in which World Bank staff are promoted¿while whistleblowers questioning government corruption are expelled."--The Observer (UK)

"It is passionately written and backed up by knowledge and experience."--New Agriculturist on-line

"Unputdownable--as thrilling as any thriller... I've never read an account of the life of an economic consultant which came anywhere near it in the vividness of the observation or the pace of the action."--Clive Dewey, University of Leicester

"As a diarized account of the work of an economist--sensitively written and enjoyable--it is compulsory reading for anybody studying economics, management, marketing, business and other social sciences."--David Needham, Nottingham Trent University

About the Author

Peter Griffiths is an independent economist and consultant.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (September 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184277185X
• ISBN-13: 978-1842771853
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #745,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > History > Africa > Sierra Leone

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Andybody Who Cares Should Read This, June 27, 2004

By 

Andrew Saporoschenko (Orange, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank (Paperback)

An excellent, excellent book in several ways. Anybody who cares - about society - conservative, moderate, or liberal should read this. All economists, political scientists, politicians, and students of these fields should read this book carefully. The Economist's Tale is a true morality play. It looks at the way economics plays out in real-life using the framework of food policy in Sierra Leone. The author is not against market forces - but as economic theory has recognized in the last few decades - markets work (or don't work) with many attendant frictions and imperfections. Unfortunately, in the tale told within this book, people die because of these frictions.

The Economist's Tale is also quite interesting and riveting as a read. It is also a quick read. One learns much about Sierra Leone among other non-economic subjects. It appears nobody else has rated this book yet - which tends to indicate that few people have read it - a sad state of affairs.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insighful and sad account, January 27, 2005

By 

Sabad One - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank (Paperback)

A good book, known by few, written by an even less well known author, to which I am grateful. As (probably) most of the other readers, I learned about this book from a (very positive) book review published on the "Economist".

This book tells a first person account of how bad economics, corruption, or "simple" incompetence almost caused a famine of immane proportion in Sierra Leone, in the 80s, with the important "contribution" of the World Bank. The author (at the time a consultant for the World Bank) tells us how he managed to avert the crisis, a deed that many did not appreciate, and that caused him professional troubles later on.

It is a mistery how this book can be so little known. It is well written, and above all quite deep. Mr Griffith clearly shows to be a skilled and informed economist. I found particularly compelling the pages that discuss how economic "data" should be often taken with a grain of salt, or two. Especially in poor countries, "data" are sometimes nothing else that guesses (sometimes educated, sometimes not), and this may lead to enormous policy mistakes. Unfortunately, people's lives may put at stake by such mistakes. One point that Mr Griffith powerfully makes is that economic policy is not simply boring material to be debated by politicians and discussed in the ivory towers of academia, but it is something REAL that has sometimes the potential of deciding about the fate of millions of people. Unfortunately, policy is the hands of men, and this book amply shows once more how little trust we should have in men.

Overall, this is quite a compelling reading, much more than the insipid "Globalization and its discontent" by Stiglitz, a world-class economist that has produced a little polemic book that could have been memorable, and instead has disappointed everyone, except uncritical anti-globalization protesters. If you are looking for a deeper account of the potential evil of economic policy and the World Bank, this book is highly recommended.

P.S. By the way, contrary to what some extremist may believe, the World Bank is not only made by evil individuals who only care about their career. The World Bank is a very complex institution, and I can assure you that committed, serious, and conscientious individuals abound in there. Whether they have a major role in how the World Bank actually works in Developing Countries is something I still have to find out...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read, December 28, 2005

By 

William Whyte (Somerville, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger and the World Bank (Paperback)

The Economist's Tale is a clunkily-written but still gripping story of corruption, dogmatism and a barely-averted famine in Sierra Leone in 1986. The author, working on food policy for the World Bank and seconded to the Sierra Leonian government, discovers that:

- The country lives mainly on rice (the backup crop, cassava, has all been eaten over the last two years).
- Nobody knows whether or not enough rice is being grown to feed the country (there are two different scientific studies of production that differ by 80%). Some rice is imported, but anything from 20-100% of it is smuggled out of the country again, and nobody knows how much.
- The currency, the leone, was held at an overvalued rate to the dollar. Imported rice was half the price of home-grown rice and the monopoly exporter was so inefficient that cocoa and coffee growers saw about 20% of the price they might have seen on the open market. So no-one's growing anything.
- Now the leone's been floated at the World Bank's insistence, it's collapsed in value by a factor of 10. But production is too low for native producers to take advantage: imports will go up in price long before the exchange comes into the country to buy them.

Then he works out by interviews and legwork that, in fact, the country depends on the imported rice to avoid a famine. And then the government signs a deal with the World Bank, his employer, to get an emergency loan of $5 million, in return for which they will stop all rice subsidies and slash their rice imports by almost 90%. And the private importers who might import enough rice to make up the difference won't, because they can't afford to sell it below the market rate and, being all Lebanese, they'd rather not get involved than risk starting a race riot by being seen as price-gouging. As the only person who knows all the facts, he has to persuade the government to break its deal with the World Bank without starting a turf war, making the decision take so long that a famine happens anyway, or destroying his own future career.

It's an excellent book. The lessons:
- Economics is all about incentives. No matter how ideal a market solution might be in theory, if the incentives aren't lined up right the market won't work.
- A currency whose liquidity is so small that its value is changed by importing a single expensive car probably shouldn't be floating.
- Corruption is everywhere, and corruption kills. The state electricity company is unreliable, so everyone uses personal, much more inefficient generators, so there isn't enough oil.
- Dogmatism also kills. You can't un-distort a market overnight. There's a lovely moment when a British Conservative starts explaining to the Americans how privatisation isn't really that great an idea.

Recommended to anyone who's interested in development economics, africa, politics, food, globalization, the World Bank, racism, colonialism, and any of the other ways that people end up treating people the way they do. And it has a happy ending!