Introduction

Abstract

In 1994, the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) launched the Global Economic Institutions (GEI) Research Programme, with the objective of funding academic research on the functioning of multilateral economic organisations and about the global institutions within which economic activity takes place. The IMF and theWorld Bank are the two major global institutions established at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, and they have now been joined by the World Trade Organization (WTO). An earlier volume (Gilbert and Vines, 2000) arising out of the GEI Programme was devoted to the World Bank. In this volume, which will be the final publication from the programme, which ended in 2000, we move to the IMF. This book began with a conference on the future of the Global Economic Institutions, held at the Bank of England, in May 2000 at which a number of the papers included as chapters in this volume were presented. We are very grateful to the Bank of England for hosting the conference. The conference discussion suggested to us that it would be valuable to bring together some of the presenters of papers at that conference and others to produce a book on the future of the IMF within international financial architecture. The process of assembling the book has been overtaken by the crisis in Argentina. This crisis has hardened attitudes about the IMF, in that all wish to avoid repeat events like the Argentine crisis. Show more