Reforming the IMF: Long Term Lessons from Short Term Crises

There is a danger that reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be dominated by its experience in the context of the East Asian financial crisis. Although there are clearly lessons to learn from this, it would be unwise to allow recent events to dominate the reform agenda. In many respects the crisis only provides a further specific example of more general and fundamental issues spanning the design and implementation of conditionality, exchange rate policy in developing countries and countries in transition, the ability of the Fund to mobilise and manage other financial flows, the size of IMF lending, the international lender of last resort function, and capital account liberalisation. Moreover, to focus on the Fund’s role in better off developing countries is to ignore its role in low income countries. There is a problem of attention bias. Reforming the IMF for the 21st century requires that all these issues are addressed.