World Bank (World Bank Group)

The World Bank was established in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference, at the same gathering that created the International Monetary Fund, and is headquartered in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Where the WTO writes the rules of trade, the World Bank's job is to supply long-term finance for reconstruction and economic development, particularly to countries that cannot easily raise such capital on their own in international financial markets on affordable terms.

What is commonly called "the World Bank" is, more precisely, the core of a larger institutional family known as the World Bank Group. Its two central constituents are the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which lends to middle-income and creditworthy lower-income governments, and the International Development Association (IDA), which provides highly concessional loans and grants to the world's poorest countries. Around this core sit three further members of the wider World Bank Group: the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which finances and advises private-sector projects and companies in developing countries rather than lending to governments; the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), which provides political-risk insurance and credit guarantees to encourage foreign investment into developing economies; and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which provides facilities for the conciliation and arbitration of investment disputes between governments and foreign investors. Together, these five institutions let the World Bank Group address development finance from multiple angles — sovereign lending, concessional aid, private-sector investment, risk insurance, and dispute resolution. …