Barber B. Conable Jr., an influential Republican congressman from western New York who as president of the World Bank steered it through a turbulent period of defaults and restructuring, died on Sunday at his winter home in Sarasota, Fla. He was 81 and lived in Alexander, in Genesee County.

The cause was complications of a staph infection, his family said.

Mr. Conable represented a largely rural district for 20 years, from 1965 to January 1985, rising to power and respect as the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.

In the House, he became one of his party's most knowledgeable legislators in the field of taxation. He played a central role in shaping legislation on trade in 1974 and on capital gains and Social Security in 1977.

During both the Ford and Carter administrations, he supported measures to lower personal income taxes and to step up depreciation allowances for businesses.

But one of his most notable accomplishments had come earlier with the passage of the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act of 1972. The legislation, a revenue-sharing concept benefiting lower levels of government, was opposed by leaders of both parties on the Ways and Means Committee. The Nixon administration strongly favored it, as did Mr. Conable's ally, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York. In a campaign that lasted two years, Mr. Conable was able to marshal the urban contingent among the committee Democrats, get the bill through Ways and Means and see it through to approval by Congress.

Over the course of his Congressional career he represented a district embracing the western part of the city of Rochester and Monroe County, along with Genesee, Wyoming, Orleans and Livingston Counties. He served 18 years on the Ways and Means Committee, 8 of them — his final 8 in Congress — as ranking minority leader.

He also sat for lesser periods on the Joint Economic, Budget and Ethics committees.

Mr. Conable's wide experience, however, left him with no specific expertise in banking, especially on an international level, or wide experience in management. Thus, it came as a surprise in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan named him president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, commonly known as the World Bank. Born from the ashes of World War II, it customarily had an American in charge.

For the Reagan administration, it was Mr. Conable's legislative skill on the domestic front that made him a formidable choice for the job. As an insider on Capitol Hill, he effectively lobbied a reluctant Congress to give the World Bank greater support for global development.

With his influence deployed in Congress, the United States went along with the bank's other lender states in nearly doubling its available capital. At the same time, he was enough of an outsider at the bank to rein in its bureaucracy and move it from central planning toward market-oriented policies to relieve poverty around the world.

He gave the bank new direction, and under his guidance its development division devised programs specifically aimed at benefiting the economic activities of women. It also opened a new department to ensure that environmental issues be considered in projects financed by the bank.

Barber Benjamin Conable was born on Nov. 2, 1922, in Warsaw, in Wyoming County, and graduated from Cornell University in 1942. He served with the Marines in World War II, seeing action at Iwo Jima, and again during the Korean War, reaching the rank of colonel.

He graduated with honors from Cornell Law School in 1948. Later that year he began practicing law in Buffalo. After service in Korea, he practiced law with his father, Barber Benjamin Conable Sr., in Batavia. The younger Mr. Conable was elected to the State Senate in 1962 and to Congress in 1964.

After he retired from the World Bank in 1991, he served on corporate and public boards. At his death, he was a member of advisory panels for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the United Nations-affiliated Commission on Global Governance; a member and former chairman of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution; and a member and former chairman of the executive committee of the National Committee on United States-China Relations.

A Republican stalwart respected on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Conable made no secret of his sense of betrayal when the Watergate scandal brought down Richard Nixon, whose policies he had supported. In its aftermath, he did not answer the former president's letters or attend his funeral.

Mr. Conable is survived by his wife of 51 years, Charlotte Williams Conable; three daughters, Anne Conable of Bennington, N.Y., Jane Schmieder of East Bethany, N.Y., and Emily Conable of Alexander; a son, Sam, of Sarasota; a brother, John, of Warsaw; and 11 grandchildren.

Barber Conable (1922)