This book assesses the experience of countries with adjustment programs and the effectiveness of adjustment lending from the World Bank in supporting these programs. It takes an inventory of the decade of experience with adjustment lending in fifty-one countries from 1980 to 1987. The studies presented here have comprehensively evaluated such aspects of adjustment lending as its design, policy, components, conditionality, social implications, macroeconomic interactions, and country performances for a sample of nine countries from all regions of the developing world. Three positive features of adjustment lending emerge from the inventory presented here. First, among countries requiring adjustments, those that have carried out major adjustments have performed better on average in terms of their aggregate economic activity than those that have not. Second, the overall rate of implementation of loan conditionalities seems to have been quite satisfactory.