The International Monetary Fund was created to centralise the management of the global monetary system. As international financial markets evolved, the richer countries turned to other, more flexible sources of finance and IMF lending became almost exclusively focused on the developing world....

The present arrangements for providing developing countries, and in particular the least developed countries, with international finance are inadequate in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Fundamental changes seem necessary. These changes might incorporate the establishment of a new...

The principal cause of the balance of payments deficits of the non-oil developing countries has altered since 1973: exogenous factors now play a far more important role than previously. The appropriateness of the conditions conventionally attached to IMF drawings needs to be re-examined in this...

The last 15 years have seen broad operational changes in the international system, accompanied since the beginning of the 1980s by a change in economic philosophy in a number of important industrial countries. Professor Bird examines the effects of various features of the post-Bretton Woods era...