Book Review Jeffrey R. Chwieroth. Capital Ideas – The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization. Princeton Princeton Univers.docx

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1、Jeffrey I Chwieroth Capital Ides - The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization.Princeton: Princeton University Press 2010.Since its inception at the end of World War II, the I MF has played a role in virtuallyevery economic event of global significance The Fund has carried out its basic mandate

2、 ofoverseeing the international monetary system and ensuring exchange rate stability to mixedreviews Few critics of the IMF would quibble over the organizatiori s stated goalssome mayeven deem them as noble. The bulk of the criticisn has centered around the implementation ofthe goals (and, from some

3、 quarter the perceived lopsided nature of the Fund s governancestructure).In his book Capital Ideas - The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization, Jeffrey M.Ch wieroth provides the best inside view of the international organization that an outsider canoffer Ch wieroth who is a senior lecturer i

4、n the Department of International Relations at theLondon School of Economics and Political Science, does not attempt to address the entire rangeof I MF policies and activities Rather he focuses on the Fund s official position and its policiesboth official and informal, concerning capital controls an

5、d capital account liberalization Moreprecisely Ch wieroth highlights the divergence that exists between official I MF policy and theinformal behavior of the IMF staff with respect to capital account liberalization, and then spendsthe better part of the book describing the organizatiori s inner worki

6、ngs and explaining theprocesses by which the divergence developed (and by extension the processes by which thenormative standards of any international organization may shift overtime).Ch wieroth notes in his introduction, uLTJhere was a great deal of what principal-agent,(PA) theorists call ppagd be

7、tween formal IMF rules and the staff sactions, with many staffme mbers in the 1980s and 1990s encouraging liberalization even though the formal rules to thisday give me mber states the right to use controls In fact, the initiative to amend the Articles inthe late 1990s was in large part an exercise

8、in empowering the staff with more tools to encouragea policy that many of them had already been promoting informally for nearly a decade page 9.This lippagd between formal rules and staff behavior occurred through fiveintraorganizational processes that Ch wieroth identified in his research: professi

9、onalization,ad mi nistralive recruit merit, adaption, learning and norm entrepreneurshi pPrincipal-agent theory provides the most obvious framework for examining the operationof individual actors within an organization, and Ch wieroth reviews the essential concepts Thebasic principal-agent problem a

10、rises when the individual actor; or agent, has incentives thatdiffer from those of the principal The typical solution is that the principal m ust create someincentive structure that better aligns the agenf s incentives with the principal s goa or else theprincipal must engage in costly monitoring of

11、 the agenf s behavior Principal-agent theory mayoffer a suitable starting point for analysis but, as Ch wieroth notes, “PA theorists help us tounderstand why normative change might be driven by agents rather than principals But PAtheory is less helpful in accounting for the processes that shape how

12、10 internationalorganization preferences form and change. It is not that P theorists do not expect 10s topossess autono my, but rather that they generally fail to explain adequately w hat preferences 10swill pursue and how these preferences will change given their autonom, |p. 29.Many readers would

13、likely be surprised to learn of the relatively high degree of autono m yand influence enjoyed by the IMF staff The staff s autonomy and influence derive primarilyfrom its role in agenda-setting which was formalized in the 1950s and early 1960s The staff165Capital Ideas - The IMF and the Rise of Fina

14、ncial Liberalizationme mbers prepare all the recommendations presented to the I MF board Some member states mayexpress their preferences through informal contact with staff me mbers, but the contents of therecommendations are largely generated by the staff This situation exists partly due to theFund

15、 s bureaucratic didsion of labor but pri marily due to the fact that country consultations,loan negotiations and the lot require a level of expertise most board directors and their staff donot possess For developing nations, some of which may only devote li mi ted resources to IMFrelations the const

16、raint is even more binding Contributing to the staff sautonomy is the orrsitenature of much of the staff s work Chwieroth notes “Orrsite missions-enable the staff togather extensive data and perform sophisticated econo metric analysis which they in turn employto support their recom mendations The staff members are sometimes the best and only availablesource of d