The recent financial crisis teaches important lessons regarding the lender-of-last resort function. Large swap lines extended in 2007-08 from the Federal Reserve to other central banks show that the classic concept of a national last-resort lender fails to address key vulnerabilities in a globalized financial system with multiple currencies. What system of emergency international financial support will best help to minimize the likelihood of future economic instability? Acting alongside national central banks, the International Monetary Fund has a key role to play in the constellation of lenders of last resort. As the income-level and institutional divergence between emerging and mature economies shrinks over time, the IMF may even evolve into a global last- resort lender that channels central bank liquidity where it is needed. The IMF's effectiveness would be greatly enhanced by several complementary reforms in international financial governance, though some of these appear politically problematic at the present time.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan in its series IMES Discussion Paper Series with number
09-E-18.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Kinken) The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Kinken to update the entry or send us the correct address..
Find related papers by JEL classification: E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions F36 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Financial Aspects of Economic Integration
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: