WORKBENCH #02: WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORTS 1978-2021
The World Development Report (WDR) is the annual flagship publication of the World Bank. The WDR was initiated by World Bank Group President Robert S. McNamara and launched in 1978. For McNamara development was 'complex and exacting' (McNamara, Robert S. (1977) 'Address to the Board of Governors' 26 September, Washington, DC.1977, p. 36) and he believed that a central challenge in achieving development was a lack of relevant knowledge. The WDR was conceived to fill this gap as "an ongoing assessment of development problems. The objective will be to improve the Bank's own understanding of the principal components of the development process and their complex interrelationships, and thus gradually develop a framework that can better assist our member countries to deal with that process more effectively" (ibid., p. 33).
On this Workbench #2 we share descriptive statistics regarding the use of various linguistic signs in the WDRs 1978-2021. Our corpus contained the main text of the Reports, including 'text boxes', 'spotlights' and 'definitions', but excluding ToCs, acknowledgments, bibliographies, references, and appendices. The global corpus of the WDRs 1978-2021 contains ~4.4 million words. If not otherwise stated, we normalised word frequencies by 1,000,000 words.
This Workbench feeds into the ECOINT-project that studies the symbolic construction of 'economic problems' (led by Sabine Selchow).
The World Development Reports (1978-2021)
Year | WB President | Team Leader/s | WDR Title |
---|---|---|---|
1979 | Robert S. McNamara | Shankar Acharya | Structural Change and Development Policy |
1980 | Robert S. McNamara | Paul Isenman | Poverty and Human Development |
1981 | Robert S. McNamara | Robert Cassen | National and International Adjustment |
1982 | Alden W. Clausen | David Turnham | Agriculture and Economic Development |
1983 | AldenW. Clausen | Pierre Landell-Mills | Management in Development |
1984 | AldenW. Clausen | Nancy Birdsall | Population Change and Development |
1985 | AldenW. Clausen | Francis X. Colaço | International Capital and Economic Development |
1986 | AldenW. Clausen | Anandarup Ray | Trade and Pricing Policies in World Agriculture |
1987 | Barber B. Conable | Sarath Rajapatirana | Industrialization and Foreign Trade |
1988 | Barber B. Conable | Johannes F. Linn | Public Finance and Development |
1989 | Barber B. Conable | Millard F. Long | Financial Systems and Development |
1990 | Barber B. Conable | Lyn Squire | Poverty |
1991 | Barber B. Conable | Vinod Thoma | The Challenge of Development |
1992 | Lewis Preston | Andrew Steer | Development and the Environment |
1993 | Lewis Preston | Dean T. Jamison | Investing in Health |
1994 | Lewis Preston | Gregory Ingram | Infrastructure for Development |
1995 | James D. Wolfensohn | Michael Walton | Workers in an Integrating World |
1996 | James D. Wolfensohn | Alan H. Gelb | From Plan to Market |
1997 | James D. Wolfensohn | Ajay Chhibber | The State in a Changing World |
1998 | James D. Wolfensohn | Carl Dahlman | Knowledge for Development |
1999 | James D. Wolfensohn | Shahid Yusuf | Entering the 21st Century: The Changing Development Landscape |
2000 | James D. Wolfensohn | Ravi Kanbur and Nora Lustig | Attacking Poverty |
2002 | James D. Wolfensohn | Roumenn Islam | Building Institutions for Markets |
2003 | James D. Wolfensohn | Zmarak Shalizi | Sustainable Development in a Dynamic World: Transforming Institutions, Growth, and Quality of Life |
2004 | James D. Wolfensohn | Shantayanan Devarajan and Ritva Reinikka | Making Services workd for Poor People |
2005 | James D. Wolfensohn | Warrick Smith | A Better Investment Climate for Everyone |
2006 | Paul Wolfowitz | Francisco Ferreira and Michael Walton | Equity and Development |
2007 | Paul Wolfowitz | Emmanuel Y. Jimenez | Development and the Next Generation |
2008 | Robert B. Zoellick | Derek Byerlee and Alain de Janvry | Agriculture for Development |
2009 | Robert B. Zoellick | Indermit S. Gill | Reshaping Economic Geography |
2010 | Robert B. Zoellick | Rosina Bierbaum and Marianne Fay | Development and Climate Change |
2011 | Robert B. Zoellick | Sarah Cliffe and Nigel Roberts | Conflict, Security, and Development |
2012 | Robert B. Zoellick | Ana Revenga and Sudhir Shetty | Gender Equality and Development |
2013 | Jim Yong Kim | Martín Rama, together with Kathleen Beegle and Jesko Hentschel | Jobs |
2014 | Jim Yong Kim | Norman Loayza, together with Inci Ötker-Robe | Risk and Opportunity |
2015 | Jim Yong Kim | Karla Hoff and Varun Gauri | Mind, Society, and Behavior |
2016 | Jim Yong Kim | Deepak Mishra and Uwe Deichmann | Digital Dividends |
2017 | Jim Yong Kim | Luis Felipe López-Calva and Yongmei Zhou | Governance and the Law |
2018 | Jim Yong Kim | Deon Filmer and Halsey Rogers | Learning to Realize Education’s Promise |
2019 | Jim Yong Kim | n/a | The Changing Nature of Work |
2020 | David R. Malpass | Caroline Freund and Aaditya Mattoo and Pol Antràs (Harvard University) | Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains |
2021 | David R. Malpass | Robert Cull, Vivien Foster and Dean Jolliffe | Data for Better Lives |
1978 | Robert S. McNamara | D. C. Rao | Prospects for Growth and Alleviation of Poverty |
Women listed in the table:
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Nancy Birdsall (1984)
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Nora Lustig (2000)
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Rosina Bierbaum (2010)
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Marianne Fay (2010)
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Sarah Cliffe (2011)
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Ana Revenga (2012)
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Kathleen Beegle (2013)
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Inci Ötker-Robe (2014)
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Karla Hoff (2015)
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Yongmei Zhou (2017)
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Caroline Freund (2020)
-
Vivien Foster (2021)
Selected terms in the WDRs
Click on the tabs to see how often the respective term appears in each WDR. If not otherwise stated, we normalised word frequencies by 1,000,000 words. The first tab shows the total number of words in each WDR.

Please reference anything from this site as: Selchow, Sabine (2022) 'The Language of the World Development Reports 1978-2021: Descriptive statistics' ECOINT Workbench #02, available at: https://bit.ly/3KIggkb