The anouncement in October 1995 of an agreement with Peru marked the concluding stages of the commercial bank debt crisis tirggered by Mexico in August 1982. With its completion all major Latin American nations will have succeeded in exchanging partially defaulted bank loans into marketed bonds...

The political economy of currency taxation suggests that the idea will receive more support if it can be shown to make a significant contribution to offsetting the perceived inefficiencies of private international capital markets. This paper explores what can be expected from a currency tax in...

Recent financial crises seem to have led to the broad consensus that developing countries should steer clear of exchange rate regimes that lie anywhere between the two extremes or [corner solutions] of credibly fixed or flexible arrangements. But is this a reasonable position to adopt? Would...

Most analyses of the East Asian financial crisis have focused on its causes and the links between currency and banking crises. However a related question is what happens in the aftermath of a crisis? What factors determine the path of an economy in the post-devaluation phase? Does it swiftly...

Although the IMF presents itself as a monetary institution, it plays an important role in providing support to poor countries via its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility. It is difficult to imagine more central development issues than poverty and growth. However, while there is a broad...

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...

The eurozone crisis has involved sharp output declines and has generated much discussion about the appropriate design of macroeconomic policy both in terms of dealing with the contemporary situation and minimising the risks of future crises. Much of the debate surrounding the crisis has focused...

Some commentators have claimed that there is a growing Beijing Consensus among emerging and developing economies concerning the merits of China’s economic policies. Within an analytical framework provided by the well known international policy trilemma, this paper investigates the empirical...

Consensus in macroeconomics helps policymakers formulate a coherent and logically consistent group of policies. At different times in the post-war era there has been consensus around first Keynesian and then monetarist ideas. Economic crises have frequently brought one type of consensus to an...