The Inter-American Development Bank and its role in supportive economic and developmental research

In the areas of Latin American development economics and regional economic integration, one institution may be viewed as the focal point for most of the activity associated with these fields. This institution is the Inter-American Development Bank. It is important that the librarian charged with book collecting in these areas be familiar with the operations of the Bank and its publishing program. Significant as they are, however, the Bank's publications are not its only contribution to scholarly research and publication in development economics. The very nature of the Bank's lending programs provides a vital stimulus to government, business and academia to conduct their own independent studies in these fields. A careful reading of the Bank's annual reports should underscore the importance of this supportive role, and one might further suggest that the Bank, through its reports, can be seen as a bellwether of future research in those areas of the society and economy of Latin America in which it is so manifestly involved.