Critics are challenging the traditional role of the IMF to facilitate development and alleviate poverty, viewing policies as doctrinaire and in need of change to meet objectives. This examines the arguments and the future role of the IMF.
Critics are challenging the traditional role of the IMF to facilitate development and alleviate poverty, viewing policies as doctrinaire and in need of change to meet objectives. This examines the arguments and the future role of the IMF.
This pamphlet is adapted from Chapter 1 of Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979-89, by the same author. That book is full of history of the evolution of the Fund during 11 years in which the institution truly came of age as a participant in the international financial system.
In March 2006, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank commissioned the External Review Committee on IMF-World Bank Collaboration to look at the status of institutional collaboration and provide suggestions for improvement. The Committee’s report, released in February 2007, called for the strengthening of the culture of collaboration in the two institutions, and made a number of specific proposals in that direction. The Joint Management Action Plan (JMAP) was prepared against this background, and the actions agreed between Bank and Fund managements in the JMAP are scheduled to be presented in informal Board meetings in early October. The JMAP will be launched immediately after the Annual Meetings. The goal is for most new systems to be operational in time for the preparation of FY09 budgets.
The twenty-one contributions in this book assess the controversy surrounding the Fund and provide judgments about the criteria for Fund lending which should help readers understand and analyze both its ongoing role in smoothing adjustment to international payments imbalances and its currently critical position in responding to the debt crisis.
The International Monetary Fund is the centre of a global financial system that encourages budgetary discipline and full integration into world trade to facilitate development and alleviate poverty. Yet this policy 'conditionality' of the IMF is highly controversial. Critics state that fifty years of IMF existence has been 'fifty years too long', and that its doctrinaire policy must change or Fund programmes will have only limited ability to achieve their objectives. This book examines the arguments, tracing the extent of Fund adaptation, presenting major new evidence on the consequences of Fund programmes, and considering its future role.
In Dance of the Trillions, David Lubin tells the story of what makes money flow from high-income countries to lower-income ones; what makes it flow out again; and how developing countries have sought protection against the volatility of international capital flows. The book traces an arc from the 1970s, when developing countries first gained access to international financial markets, to the present day. Underlying this story is a discussion of how the relationship between developing countries and global finance appears to be moving from one governed by the “Washington Consensus” to one more likely to be shaped by Beijing.
IMF lending practices respond to economic conditions but are also sensitive to political-economy variables. Specifically, the sizes and frequencies of loans are influenced by a country's presence at the Fund, as measured by the country's share of quotas and professional staff. IMF lending is also sensitive to a country's political and economic proximity to some major shareholding countries of the IMF -- the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. We measured political proximity by voting patterns in the United Nations and economic proximity by bilateral trading volumes. These results are of considerable interest for their own sake but also provide instrumental variables for estimating the effects of IMF lending on economic performance. Instrumental estimates indicate that the size of IMF lending is insignificantly related to economic growth in the contemporaneous five-year period but has a significantly negative effect in the subsequent five years.
The IMF is the first economic institution in line to protect countries from the effects of financial crises and to insulate the world economy from possible systemic risk. However, many argue that the IMF is insufficiently equipped to do this job, while others argue almost the opposite: the IMF's well-intentioned actions induce other countries to take risks which increase their exposure from both universities and the multilateral agencies, combines rigourous economic analysis with insider perspectives on key policy debates. It analyses the Asian and Argentine financial crises of the late 1990s, issues of policy ownership, the more general quest for financial stability and governance of the IMF. It is an essential reference for anyone interested in the role of international financial institutions in our globalised economy.