December 27, 2007
Should the World Bank name and shame its own?
Per Kurowski on the World Bank's fight against corruption:
[P]lease search out INT on the external website of the World Bank and then click on the list of Debarred Firms and Individuals. On that list you will find, duly named and shamed, the names of many individuals that one way or another after a due process have been considered involved in corruption, but that list does not include one single name of those officers of the World Bank that presumably must also have been involved in these acts of corruption one way or another. Susanne Folsom the Director of INT, on a Q&A session on that same site mentions, “We’re often asked why we don’t publicly name Bank staff who are terminated for fraud and corruption as well. The Bank’s rules don’t allow such disclosures….” What credibility can you get naming others while not being willing to name your own?
Posted by Dingel at 04:44 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2007
IMF reform: progress report
At VoxEU, Peter B. Kenen summarizes the IMF's reform progress.
Posted by Dingel at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2007
Suggestions for the IMF
Andres Opennheimer writes:
There would be dozens of qualified candidates for the top IMF job from emerging countries, who would not make anybody nervous in the U.S., German or British treasuries.Among others: former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo; former Brazilian Central Bank President Pedro Malan; former Argentine Central Bank Gov. Mario Blejer; India's planning minister, Montek Singh Ahluwalia; or the former chairman of Poland's National Bank, Leszek Balcerowicz.
Any of them would be a more credible broker of future financial crises, a more even-handed monitor of the world economy, than Sarkozy's candidate.
Posted by Dingel at 08:32 AM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2007
Progress at the IMF?
An editorial (in French) from Wal Fadjri, a Senegalese newspaper, calling for rejection of the EU's nominee for IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn:
As a matter of principle, Africa should challenge the gentleman's agreement between the U.S. and Europe, whereby the head of the IMF is a European and the head of the World Bank an American. This longstanding divvying-up of these positions-which is no longer justified-is outdated and should simply be abolished. The IMF is not France's monopoly, even if it has managed it for 32 of its 52 years, and the IMF's antidemocratic, despotic, medieval, and feudal constitution needs to be amended.
And the IMF is hit with English-language criticism by AEI's Desmond Lachman:
The need for a serious external evaluation of the IMF and the World Bank would appear all the more pressing now at a time that both of these institutions need to restore their tattered credibility. The IMF is yet to shake off its many missteps during the Asian and Latin American currency crises some ten years ago, while the World Bank is presently reeling from its two years of mismanagement under Paul Wolfowitz's leadership. And the continued practice of dividing the leadership of the World Bank and the IMF between the Americans and the Europeans has hardly done anything to restore the legitimacy of those institutions, especially among the Asian emerging market economies, whose weight continues to increase in the global economy.How timely it would be to have an external evaluation of these institutions now on the eve of new management taking charge, when serious questions should be asked as to the correct long-term course that these institutions should be charting.
CGD's Dennis de Tray is pleasantly surprised to see some progress:
Last Friday the IMF board announced that it would accept nominations... a first and essential step in opening up the process of selecting the IMF leader...The announcement is a welcome if slightly amazing turn of events. I've worked at both the IMF and the World Bank, and came away from my Fund experience thinking this was an institution with an almost pathological aversion to change...
Does this announcement guarantee that the best man or woman will get the job? No, but it is a critical signal that at least some of the world's leading nations understand that business as usual in the governance of the world’s premier international organizations is just not on.
Strauss-Kahn is still expected to win the post.
Posted by Dingel at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2007
The IMF and WB in Africa
Ha-Joon Chang has a new book promoting protectionism, titled Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
As for Africa, its per capita income grew relatively slowly even in the 1960s and the 1970s (1-2 per cent a year). But since the 1980s, the region has seen a fall in living standards. There are, of course, many reasons for this failure, but it is nonetheless a damning indictment of the neoliberal orthodoxy, because most of the African economies have been practically run by the IMF and the World Bank over the past quarter of a century.
While I agree that the IMF and the World Bank haven't done a great job, I think it's wrong to portray them as the caretakers of Africa and the institutions responsible for its disappointing growth rates. They've never had that much power, and I've never seen another academic suggest it. Research on African economic performance has focused on institutions and geography. As Paul Collier summarizes (pdf):
Africa’s growth failure has attracted competing explanations. During the 1980s the World Bank diagnosed the problem as inappropriate economic policies, Berg (1981) offering the first clear statement of this position. Bates (1981) was the first to explain these dysfunctional policy choices in terms of the interests of powerful groups, notably the taxation of export agriculture. During the 1990s the limited response to reform induced a broader search for explanations (Collier and Gunning, 1999, 1999a). Recently three further explanations have gained currency: institutions (Acemoglu et al., 2001), leadership (Jones and Olken, 2005), and geography (Sachs, 2003).
Is there any academic research that concurs with Chang in blaming the IMF and World Bank for Africa's disappointing growth?
Posted by Dingel at 06:00 PM | Comments (1)
May 12, 2007
Petition to reform WB & IMF leadership selection
In the wake of Paul Wolfowitz's troubles, New Rules for Global Finance is collecting signatures for a petition supporting reform of the selection of World Bank and IMF directors. It concludes:
We therefore call for timely adoption of reform of the selection procedures at both institutions. We recommend as an initial constructive step that European governments and the U.S. administration publicly state that the 1940s convention should be jettisoned and commit themselves now to reformed selection procedures whenever new leadership choices have to be made for either the World Bank or the IMF.
More info here. Signatures due by Monday afternoon.
Posted by Dingel at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)
February 28, 2007
Simon Johnson to join IMF
The IMF's next chief economist will be Simon Johnson.
Posted by Dingel at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2007
IMF told to get out of development
I doubt that these suggestions will be implemented soon, but they are interesting nonetheless:
The International Monetary Fund should stop offering long-term finance to developing countries, leaving the World Bank to be the global development agency, a high-level independent committee reported on Tuesday...It should “clarify its ongoing financing activities in low-income countries and gradually withdraw from providing base line financing... over long periods in the context of a ‘development programme’,” said the report.
In particular, the IMF should stop meddling in microeconomic policies of poor countries, where the bank had specialist knowledge. “The fund should rely on the bank for sectoral assessments,” it concluded.
Posted by Dingel at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)