Crisis Prevention and Prosperity Management for the World Economy Pragmatic Choices for International Financial Governance, Part I

by Bryant, Ralph C.

• ISBN13: 9780815708674
• ISBN10: 081570867X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-17
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Summary

Turbulent Waters: Cross-Border Finance and International Governanceadvocates faster progress in reforming the international financial system. Its most important theme is the need for national governments and international organizations to upgrade their collective efforts at crisis prevention and prosperity management. The core of such efforts is the supranational surveillance of cross-border "traffic regulations" and the cooperative monitoring of nations' macroeconomic, exchange rate, and balance-of-payments policies. Concurrently, governments should streamline and strengthen the intermediation of intergovernmental lending for the liability financing of payments deficits through the International Monetary Fund. This essay gives detailed analysis supporting these conclusions and provides more technical discussion of the incremental policy measures needed to strengthen these collective efforts.

Author Biography

Ralph C. Bryant is a senior fellow and the Edward M. Bernstein Scholar in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution

Table of Contents

Collective surveillance : rationale and basic questions	p. 3
Venues for intergovernmental cooperation : general considerations	p. 7
Institutional dimensions of supranational surveillance	p. 10
The IMF and other international organizations as traffic monitors and adjustment referees	p. 16
Soft or hard guidelines?	p. 26
Improving analytical foundations	p. 30
Dissemination of information : transparency versus confidentiality	p. 34
The individual nation's choice of exchange regime	p. 39
Guidelines for cross-border financial transactions	p. 49
Use of financial sector assessments in broader surveillance of a nation's economic policies	p. 58
Explicit coordination of national macroeconomic policies?	p. 60
Evolution of macro-surveillance for the world economy	p. 62
Lending intermediation among national governments : general considerations	p. 67
Lending intermediation and surveillance by the IMF	p. 72
Should the IMF's mandate be narrowed to crisis vulnerability?	p. 75
Should the IMF's mandate be broadened?	p. 80
IMF lending facilities	p. 87
IMF lending : an overview	p. 104
The IMF : whose institution?	p. 107
IMF governance : distribution of quotas, voting power, and constituencies	p. 109
Aggregate size of IMF resources	p. 134
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