A New Bretton Woods?
The Bretton Woods sisters, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (henceforth the World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), were set up in 1944. The original purpose of the former was to help post-Second World War re...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/692531468177837839/A-new-Bretton-Woods http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27999 |
| Summary: | The Bretton Woods sisters, the
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(henceforth the World Bank) and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), were set up in 1944. The original purpose of the
former was to help post-Second World War reconstruction; the
purpose of the latter was to help revive global trade while
averting the 'beggar-thy-neighbor' exchange rate
policies that characterized the interwar years. Over the
years, the World Bank has refocused on helping poor
countries grow while the IMF broadly attempts to foster
country policies that ensure macroeconomic stability and
limit adverse spillovers to the rest of the world. While
these roles still remain, their nature has changed somewhat.
In particular, given the development of financial markets
around the world, the primary role of these institutions has
moved to shaping, guiding, supplementing, and stabilizing
the flow of private finance rather than substituting fully
for it. This paper focuses on the new ways multilateral
institutions may have to perform old tasks, as well as the
ways they could perform new tasks such as slowing climate
change. Critical to their transformation will be the
attitudes of the countries that play the largest role in
their governance, as well as reform of the governance
process itself. |
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