Empowering the IMF: Should Reform be a Requirement for Increasing the Fund's Resources?

Mark Weisbrot, Jose Cordero and Luis Sandoval

CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs from Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR)

Abstract: This paper briefly reviews the IMF’s current practices and policy-making in the context of a proposed quadrupling of IMF resources to $1 trillion dollars, and a consequent increase in the Fund’s influence over economic policy-making in developing countries. It finds that the IMF is still prescribing inappropriate policies that could unnecessarily exacerbate economic downturns in a number of countries. The paper concludes that these pro-cyclical policies can exacerbate the world economic downturn. Perhaps more importantly, the re-establishment of the IMF as a major power in economic and decision-making in low-and-middle income countries, with little or no voice for these countries in the IMF’s decision-making, could have long-term implications for growth, development, and social indicators in many countries. The authors propose some reforms in the areas of governance and accountability to be attached of funding increases, in order to help prevent adverse outcomes.

Keywords: IMF (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F F1 F13 F2 F21 F3 F31 F32 F33 F34 F37 F5 F53 F54 F55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2009-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-pke
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epo:papers:2009-15

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