This series consists of the alphabetical subject files, A C, of the Economics and Policy Division. The records include memoranda, letters, reports, policy papers, numbered research proposals, and speeches, but primarily consist of drafts (some annotated) of papers and book chapters. A range of agricultural development issues are covered, such as credit and rural finance, price policies, technological innovation, and trade. The records include discussions of the Division's methods and techniques of analysis, the quality of its work and ways to improve it, and the relationship of the Division's work to the country-based work carried out in the Bank's regional offices. A few files deal with computers and their use by the Division for economic modeling and organizing economic reference data, and a few others are on conferences that members of the Division attended.

Eleven files are coded with a Research Project Output (RPO) code number, which was assigned to projects throughout the Bank by the Development Economics department. However, another four such RPO coded files, listed on the original transfer to the archives, are not among these records and probably were returned to the Agriculture and Rural Development Sector after the initial transfer of the records to the archives in 1989. One research project, RPO 671 42, on agricultural prices and subsidies, is a broad study of many countries and their pricing policies, while others are on the pricing policy of a single country (Turkey in RPO 672 78, for example) or a single topic (agriculture technology and innovation in RPO 671 44).

The correspondence is mostly that of Graham Donaldson, who was chief of the division between 1977 and 1984, but a few correspondence files postdate his tenure. Also included is a set of files on agriculture and credit that seem to be those of J. D. Von Pischke, and a file labeled Agricultural development. Reports is for the most part the speeches of Montague Yudelman.

The principal value of these records for research is the view that the records provide of the process of research and policy paper development within the Division. Some material on particular countries is found in the records, including India, the Philippines, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Senegal, Mexico, and Indonesia, much of which has probably subsequently been published. A report on the World Food Program contractual study of agricultural development in Korea is in the file Agricultural development. Reports.