For a long time the topic of national development banks was limited to a debate between admirers and detractors of these institutions, often inserted into a more general debate of state versus markets. Since the 2007/8 North Atlantic financial crisis however, interest and support for these institutions has broadly increased in both developing and developed countries. Key issues such as understanding how development banks work, what their main aims are, and what their links with the private financial and corporate sector are have come to the forefront, and there is an increased interest in what instruments, incentives, and governance work better in general and in particular contexts. The Future of National Development Banks provides an in-depth study of several key examples of these institutions based in Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, and Peru. It explores horizontal issues such as their role in innovation and structural change, sustainable infrastructure financing, financial inclusion, and regulatory rules. It provides both research and policy-oriented perspectives on how these banks can make a significant contribution to a countries' development, and analyses their roles within broader economic policy, their governance, and the main instruments they use to perform their function. The Future of National Development Banks has important policy implications for countries that have these institutions and can improve them, and countries that do not have them yet and can learn from best practice.

At the 1964 annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Panama, Felipe Herrera, then the President of the institution, argued that Cour institution must continue to demonstrate that, being a bank, it is also more than a bank. What is this institution that had the backing of both Latin American countries and the United States, and that since Herrera many have claimed it is more than a bank? And how did it come into existence?

Case study of development aid from the IDB to Costa Rica, illustrating the impact of the economic and foreign policy interests of the USA (role of USA) on the development projects of the IDB - examines the idb's strategy of regional economic integration, and finds that it has had negative effects on costa rica's economic development and has favoured multinational enterprises. Bibliography pp. 182 to 194, references and statistical tables.

The crisis of the current global financial order is challenging us to critically reflect on how this order has been driven, and the development outcomes produced by its central political and economic actors. There is a great deal of academic knowledge about the role of the international financial institutions, powerful states and capital markets in international development, but there is little understanding of how regional dynamics and regional institutions influence global governance and developing countries. This book offers an independent and grounded investigation concerning the political economic role of Regional Development Banks through a study of the world’s leading regional development bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The book examines the political economy of the IDB and its role in regional and national development during the neoliberalisation processes of the 1990s. In particular, the investigations explore the IDB’s power in regional and national development – via its technical, political and financial interventions – to frame policy alternatives, absorb opposition forces, support specific coalition forces and justify a particular direction of development, all in order to legitimize specific political economic projects directed by market-led pro-reform coalitions aligned with global financial forces and financial development guidelines. This book will be relevant to scholars and professionals interested in the international and regional political economy of development financing.