Institutions
International Monetary Fund
Also Known As The Fund
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
The International Monetary Fund, generally known as the IMF, was established by the agreement reached at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference and began financial operations the following year. It was created to oversee the postwar international monetary system, promote exchange rate stability, and provide short term financial assistance to member countries facing balance of payments difficulties, so that countries would not be forced into damaging trade restrictions or competitive currency devaluations to manage a temporary shortfall. The Fund headquarters was established in Washington, D.C., alongside its sister institution the World Bank, and both organizations grew out of the same Bretton Woods negotiations in which John Maynard Keynes played a leading role on behalf of the British delegation.
Facts
Founding Year Founding DateDated to the Bretton Woods Articles of Agreement signed at the conference's close, matching the entity's own founding-year of 1944; the IMF's formal operations began after ratification on 27 December 1945. HeadquartersWashington, D.C., United States 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The IMF led roughly 120 billion dollars in rescue packages for Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea, conditioned on structural reforms.
The IMF sets and maintains the BPM6 standard every member country's balance of payments statistics follow.
The IMF was one of the three troika institutions, with the European Commission and the ECB, that coordinated the bailout programs for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus.
The IMF coordinated rescheduling and lending conditionality across Mexico, Brazil and Argentina through the 1980s.
Moral Hazard, Concepts Why this is disputed. IMF rescue lending to governments and central bank support for failing financial institutions are frequently analyzed through a moral hazard lens. Critics argue that expected rescues encourage excessive risk taking beforehand, while defenders argue that allowing a systemically important failure to proceed would impose far greater costs on the wider economy. Economists disagree about where this balance lies in practice.
Critiqued Here
Why this is disputed. Post-Keynesian economists, following Minsky's financial-instability analysis, have long criticized IMF austerity conditionality as procyclical, worsening the financial fragility it is meant to resolve.
Founded
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
2. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationBretton Woods ConferenceQuote, Bretton Woods Conference
The conference was held from July 1 to 22, 1944
2. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationInternational Monetary FundQuote, International Monetary Fund
The IMF formally came into existence on 27 December 1945, when the first 29 countries ratified its Articles of Agreement
2. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: European Debt Crisis, European debt crisis, lead sectionQuote, Associated With: European Debt Crisis, European debt crisis, lead section
Assistance was needed from other eurozone countries, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
Palgrave MacmillanAssociated With: Moral Hazard
How Jacques de Larosiere and Paul Volcker Contained the 1982-89 Global Debt Crisis
Peterson Institute for International EconomicsAssociated With: Latin American Debt CrisisView the Source Stabilizing an Unstable Economy
Hyman Minsky, Yale University Press, 1986Debated With: Post-Keynesian Economics
Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual
Associated With: Balance of Payments
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.