Public Disclosure Authorized THE WORLD BANK GROUP IDSTORIAN'S OFFICE ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Public Disclosure Authorized Transcript of interview with JEANBANETH December 19, 1994; January 12, 1995; September 11, 1996 Public Disclosure Authorized By: Jochen Kraske Public Disclosure Authorized JEAN BANETH December 19, 1994 INTERVIEWEE'S INTRODUCTION. This is an oral history. I have therefore resisted the temptation to re-write the text thoroughly, and restricted my revisions to rendering intelligible those passages that appeared thoroughly garbled. After-thoughts I have put into the many footnotes and occasional end-notes. The temptation to re-write more drastically had been thorough, because re-reading with the greater detachment given by the many months spent since leaving the World Bank, I realized that I had often not been to the point, I also often soke to the question from the small end of the telescope, looking at the Bank as a mirror reflecting Jean Baneth, rather than vice versa. And, perhaps, I also give the impression of trying hard to write Jean Baneth's apologia vita sua. But that was my frame of mind upon retirement, and that too should be part of the record. Too much about Jean Baneth left me saying too little about all others. For us old-timers, the World Bank was much more than a job. Particularly for those of us (fewer as time went by) who came to the Bank and washington straight from abroad, it became a total environment, a way of life. Living in Washington (and in Delhi, and Jakarta, and Geneva), we were never quite of Washington, nor of America (nor of Delhi, Jakarta nor Geneva}; we were of the World Bank in these places. A good thing, then, that so many of the people we have known were kind, humane, funny, brilliant; sometimes all of those together. A good thing too that the Bank itself has played an essentially highly valuable role. I have not been sparing of my criticism; and I have much more to say along the same lines. But those should be seen as the criticism of a family member, the expressions of irritation that a beloved relative should not be wholly perfect, that the heritage of the founders should not have been used in wholly beneficial way. This interview is about the past - the Bank's past and mine, which over more than half of the one and more than three fifths of the other, coincide. I will resist the temptation to end this introduction with a word about the future. Finally, I wish to present my apologies and congratulations to Jochen Kraske. Apologies, because just about every one of his questions I appear to have interrupted. Even if I make allowances for questions trailing off into interrogative notes that were not then transcribed, I still must have interrupted him more frequently than not. And my grateful compliments for his patient guidance. ****************************************** Q: I'm Jochen Kraske, the Bank's Historian. Q: I'm David Milobsky, the Assistant to the Historian. A; I'm Jean Baneth, the interviewee. Q: Well, welcome, Jean, and thanks for agreeing to participate in our own oral history program. I guess you grew up in France and you 1 Baneth, Page 2 had all of your early education in France. Can you tell us when and how you first developed a plan to become an economist? A: I first decided to become an economist when I found out that I wasn't really good enough in math to be a chemist, a chemical engineer. That was in my last year of high school, where you specialize in France, and you have nine hours of math a week. And I was doing okay, but I wasn't doing as well as I wanted to, so I decided that instead of going into chemistry I was going to Political Science, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, which I did, specializing in public finance in my third year, specializing in economics. There were four sections in the second year, and I took economics, and in the third year within that you take public or private, and I did public. This meant that I was not going to French Civil Service 1 which was another section, essentially, the Service Public. I was thinking about some UN-related, economic development related agencies. 1 Somebody reminded me of that quite recently • Then, in my second year, I heard about the Fulbright Scholarship Program. I applied, I got a fellowship for Yale, and voila. Q: And at Yale you continued with Economics? A: Oh, yes. I went into Economics. They had something called the International and Foreign Economic Administration Program, which is what I got my fellowship for. And my Master's was in the same program. And then I went over to the regular Ph.D. program. I passed the exams 1 and then I went back. Q: So you spent two years at Yale? And then went back to finish your education. A: Well, I did. I went back. I worked for a year, and then I finished my education. You could say that, because I went into the 1 A girl I used to know fairly well at Sciences Po, whom I met after thirty-some years. 2 Baneth, Page 3 Army, and did my 28 months (which actually turned out to be a little shorter) of military service, and that was quite an education. Q: But, your education in France-- A: That was finished. Q: That was already finished by the time-- A: I had a diploma, I had graduated from the Political Science School, in a good rank, and I went on to Yale after that. Q: Can you say a little bit more. When you started your education you said you had in a sense decided you were not going into the public service in France, yet you were thinking of the public service at the international level. What was the reason to make that distinction? A: I remember this all the more clearly as, a few years ago, I met a girl whom I used to know fairly well at the University, before graduating from Sciences Po, and eventually talking about what we had done since then, I mentioned the World Bank; 11 Aah, she said, that's always what you had wanted to do". And that very clearly reminded me. 2 I don't know why I decided • I am not even sure that it was quite that simple, because one first had to decide whether to go into the "service public11 else; and I went into economics. And it was only at the end of the second year that I decided that my third year would be public finance, and why, I do not know. I did very well. I was doing very well in accounting, which was one of my favorite subjects, but it wasn't that. I had started to work on something, what you call a memoire, sort of thesis, a mini- thesis. You know that I'm originally from Hungary and in those days I was still speaking or reading at least Hungarian, and there was a fellow called Marczewski, a fairly well known student of Eastern European economics, and I started working on a rnemoire with him, and 2 I had certainly not thought about the World Bank specifically; but about some form of international work. 3 Baneth, Page 4 then he actually invited me to replace - oh, who was it, Bobrowski, a Pole who then went back home to become the Head of the Polish Planning Agency under Gomulka. His wife was of Romanian-Hungarian origin and she was working with Marczewski, and when she left with him, he invited me to join his Center, which was quite flattering; that got me interested in more public work. On the other hand, I probably would not have done this memoire if I had not already been in that position, so who knows? I really don't know how exactly it went, but you start with the Professors we had. I had Fran9ois Bloch-Laine, who was the Head of Caisse des oepOts et Consignations, and a very great man, who was very 3 impressive, and whom I liked; Paul Delouvrier , who was also very well known. Those were also the days of Mendes-France's passage as Prime Minister, and shortly thereafter his book came out, La Science Economigue et !'Action, so all these things may have worked to orient me away from the private sector. On the other hand, perhaps if a commercial bank had come to me in those days and said, here's a job that pays a million francs per month, I might have accepted that. Q: Because you are distinguished, you mentioned that you were in more of a public finance track as opposed to a more civil service track. A: Yes. Q: What, particular course of study, what are some differences between those three courses that you said--? A: This was 35 years ago. The Service Public was very clearly aimed at preparing people for a specific goal. Every French 3 He was at that time Head of Electricite de France; he became Governor of Algeria under Generale Gaulle. 4 Baneth, Page 5 examination prepares you for another examination. And Service Public track is what you followed if you wanted to go to the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA). It is not formally indispensable to do that, but a very high proportion of those who enter ENA go through that. And I did not take that track.