International financing institutions (IFIs) spend more than US$50 billion each year, most of it for development, but also some for environmental and other purposes. Yet the question which of the IFIs spend a given amount in the most efficient way seems not to have been researched. Such information would help donor and recipient countries to put pressure on badly performing IFIs and to farther the better ones. The authors therefore discuss the subject of the efficient use of financial resources by IFIs. They develop a set of determinants of spending efficiency, structured by (1) the general features of an institution, such as being public or private; (2) the organisational elements of an institution; and (3) the type of problem an institution deals with. This set of determinants also constitute a research design for the comparative analysis of the spending efficiency of IFIs.
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