eBook

Capital Ideas

Chwieroth, Jeffrey M

2009,2010

Overview

The right of governments to employ capital controls has always been the official orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund, and the organization's formal rules providing this right have not changed significantly since the IMF was founded in 1945. But informally, among the staff inside the IMF, these controls became heresy in the 1980s and 1990s, prompting critics to accuse the IMF of indiscriminately encouraging the liberalization of controls and precipitating a wave of financial crises in emerging markets in the late 1990s. In Capital Ideas, Jeffrey Chwieroth explores the inner workings of the IMF to understand how its staff's thinking about capital controls changed so radically. In doing so, he also provides an important case study of how international organizations work and evolve. Drawing on original survey and archival research, extensive interviews, and scholarship from economics, politics, and sociology, Chwieroth traces the evolution of the IMF's approach to capital controls from the 1940s through spring 2009 and the first stages of the subprime credit crisis. He shows that IMF staff vigorously debated the legitimacy of capital controls and that these internal debates eventually changed the organization's behavior--despite the lack of major rule changes. He also shows that the IMF exercised a significant amount of autonomy despite the influence of member states. Normative and behavioral changes in international organizations, Chwieroth concludes, are driven not just by new rules but also by the evolving makeup, beliefs, debates, and strategic agency of their staffs.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: 1997 Asian financial crisis / A Monetary History of the United States / Adjustable Peg / Amendment / American Enterprise Institute / Balance of payments / Barriers to entry / Bretton Woods system / Bridge bank / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Finance / General / Capital Buffer / Capital control / Capital flight / Capital market / Central bank / Collective action clause / Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System / Credit (finance) / Credit control / Credit rationing / Crony capitalism / Currency / Currency crisis / Debt restructuring / Deregulation / Developed country / Economic interventionism / Economic liberalization / Economic Policy / Economics / Economist / Efficient-market hypothesis / Exchange rate / Fear of floating / Finance / Finance -- Government policy / Financial crises / Financial crisis / Financial institution / Financial services / Financial services industry / Financial services industry -- Deregulation / Financial Times / Finanzkrise / Finanzmarktregulierung / Foreign exchange controls / Free trade debate / Global financial system / Governance / Government policy / Hedge fund / Hyman Minsky / IMF / Immiserizing growth / Infant industry / Information asymmetry / Interest Equalization Tax / International / International Monetary Fund / Internationale Wirtschaftsorganisation / Internationaler Währungsfonds / Kapitalverkehrskontrolle / Keynesian economics / Liberalization / Long run and short run / Lucas paradox / Market liquidity / Member state / Monetarism / Monetary policy / Neoclassical synthesis / Neocolonialism / Neoliberalism / New Keynesian economics / Paul Davidson (economist) / POLITICAL SCIENCE / POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Economic Policy / Profession / Protectionism / Public Policy / Recapitalization / Special drawing rights / Speculation / Structural adjustment / Structured investment vehicle / Subprime-Krise / Susan Strange / The Road to Serfdom / Tobin tax / Too big to fail / Trade barrier / Troubled Asset Relief Program
• ISBN: 1400833825, 9781400833825, 0691142319, 9780691142326, 9780691142319, 0691142327