on making the Bank’s project design and management somehow more measurable, predictable, and possibly replicable. Referring to the contemporary literature on cost-benefit techniques of project appraisal, Bank economists expected that Hirschman would shed some light on questions such as “the causes of cost run-ups and of delays in execution, [and] the feasibility and the effects of applying ‘shadow’ prices for products and factors of production.”<sup>75</sup> Herman van der Tak suggested that Hirschman ought to have “summarized the positive and negative aspects of various types of projects” into “a more operational ‘summary and conclusions,’ [...] which would provide practitioners with guidelines.”<sup>76</sup> An attempt to write this operational guide was eventually made by the Bank’s Economics Department, resulting in a hybrid between a “summary and conclusions” for practitioners as proposed by van der Tak, and a series of “annotated questions” about projects as proposed by Hirschman. However, a proper operational version of Hirschman’s book never saw light.<sup>77</sup> While the Bank was struggling with the seeming inapplicability of Hirschman’s reflections, cost-benefit analysis received a tremendous boost from research pursued by other multilateral organizations. Cost-benefit analysis had been taking shape in the 1920s as a technique in water-resources development, cultivated mostly by engineers, which subjected public investment decisions to economic analysis and evaluated alternative projects in terms of the maximization of public “utility.” It received a further stimulus during the 1930s expansion of public investment activity in the United States, especially thanks to the Flood Control Act of 1936, which dictated that only projects whose benefits were projected to exceed their costs could receive federal funds. However, the intrinsic difficulties of quantifying the projects’ effects, compounded with competing views among the different bureaucracies that had authority on water management in the United States, made it impossible to agree on a standardized method of cost-benefit analysis until the 1960s (Porter 1995, pp. 148-189). Moreover, as Stephen Marglin observed, “benefit-cost analysis was introduced as a means of project ‘justification’ alone [...], not as a tool for project planning; in American practice (as distinct from theory) it often has served as window dressing for projects whose plans have already been formulated with little if any reference to economic criteria” (Marglin 1967, p.

> 75 Dragoslav Avramovic to Department Heads, IBRD and IFC, “Investment in Developing Countries – Effects, Expectations and Reality,” February 18, 1964, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 1. 76 Herman G. van der Tak to Professor Albert O. Hirschman, December 20, 1966, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 2; Andy is Andrew M. Kamarck, Director of the Bank’s Economics Department.

> 77 Herman G. van der Tak to Professor Albert O. Hirschman, January 18, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 2; Albert O. Hirschman to Mr. Alexander Stevenson, May 1, 1967, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 2; Alexander Stevenson to Professor Albert O. Hirschman, May 18, 1967, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 2.

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