Eliminating The Imf

This book offers a concise but thorough analysis of the International Monetary Fund reform debate. Since the advent of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, a lengthy deliberation has ensued over whether the IMF should be reformed, abolished, or left as is. The authors approach this debate from a normative perspective while looking at arguments from all sides, as well as reflecting on the history, functions, and ideology of the IMF. This unique approach gives weight to the authors’ perspectives and their conclusion that the IMF ultimately does more harm than good. Written to analyze and contribute to the current IMF debate, this Palgrave Pivot is a must-read for scholars and policymakers invested in the conversation surrounding IMF reform.

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.

This paper investigates the short-term effects of fiscal consolidation on economic activity in OECD economies. We examine the historical record, including Budget Speeches and IMFdocuments, to identify changes in fiscal policy motivated by a desire to reduce the budget deficit and not by responding to prospective economic conditions. Using this new dataset, our estimates suggest fiscal consolidation has contractionary effects on private domestic demand and GDP. By contrast, estimates based on conventional measures of the fiscal policy stance used in the literature support the expansionary fiscal contractions hypothesis but appear to be biased toward overstating expansionary effects.

This volume, fourth in a series of periodic histories of the institution, is as much a history of the world economy during 1979-89 as one of the IMF itself. Boughton discusses the IMF’s surveillance of the international monetary system in the 1980s; the Fund’s role in the international debt crisis of the 1980s, and IMF lending in support of structural adjustment in low-income countries during that period. The volume concludes with a general history of the institution, including the quota system, the SDR, membership, and other institutional matters.

As the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) celebrate fifty years of economic dominion over the Third World, this reader brings the best progressive authors together to critique these two main proponents of neo-liberalism. 50 Years is Enough covers such topics as failed development projects, the feminization of poverty, the detruction of the environment, the internal workings of the World Bank and the IMF, and the struggle to build alternatives to neo-liberal policies.It also includes a guide to the many organizations involved in the struggle to reform the World Bank and the IMF.

Drawing on evidence from a sample of emerging market economies over the period 1990-2004, this evaluation report reviews the IMF’s approach to capital account liberalization and related issues. The evaluation seeks to contribute to transparency by documenting what in practice has been the IMF's approach to these issues and to identify areas where the IMF’s instruments and operating methods might be improved, in order to deal with these issues more effectively.

The IMF stands at a crossroad. Derided as increasingly irrelevant in the first decade of the new millennium, the Fund has had its power and prestige restored by the fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis. But will the resurgent IMF assert a more just and sustainable macroeconomic model and provide a voice for poor and marginalized people around the globe? Or will enduring weaknesses within the IMF mean it fails to address these issues? In this book, Bessma Momani and Mark R. Hibben dissect the variables and institutional dynamics at play in IMF governance, surveillance, lending, and capacity development to expose the fundamental barriers to change. Identifying four areas that could “fix” the IMF, they show how these genuine and workable solutions can give the IMF the effectiveness and legitimacy it needs to positively shape twenty-first-century global governance and push back against volatile and regressive forces in the international political economy.