Development economics needs to better help policymakers

World Bank Group president Robert B Zoellick today urged a rethink of development economics to make it more useful to policy makers and announced a reorientation ofWorld Bank research so it taps more effectively the experiences in developing countries through 'Open Data, Open Knowledge, Open Solutions'.
In a speech ahead of the Bank’s annual meetings in Washington, he said the global economic crisis had made the need for a rethink of development economics even more compelling. "Development knowledge should become 'multi-polar' to recognise the rising importance of developing countries as new poles of growth and experience," he said, adding that there is a new opportunity, and certainly a pressing need, for dynamism in development economics.
"Software has brought new tools; the Internet has brought new communications; rising economies have brought new experiences,” he told an audience at Georgetown University. "We need to listen and democratise development economics. Even before the crisis there was a questioning of prevailing paradigms and a sense that development economics needed rethinking," Zoellick said. "The crisis has only made that more compelling."
As the largest single source of development knowledge, the World Bank’s role must change if it wanted to keep its status as a pioneer in development economics research. "A new multi-polar economy requires multi-polar knowledge,” he said, adding that they need to democratise and demystify development economics, recognising that noone has a monopoly on the answers.
The World Bank would supplement its 'elite retail' model of economic research, which had economists focusing on specific research issues and then writing papers, with a 'wholesale' and networked research model. This new model would increasingly rely on giving outsiders software tools and access through the Internet to the Bank’s store of data so that they could do their own research and data analysis and thereby contribute to knowledge about development.
Similarly, an 'Apps for Development Competition' would encourage new, innovative tools and applications. These initiatives would allow the Bank to tap the vast experience in developing countries