Abstract
Whilst economic cooperation within the European Union has become progressively closer (albeit without any effective attack on unemployment), cooperation between governments to tackle world-wide economic problems has sunk to a low point. The shift in the emphasis of macro-economic policy during the late 1970s and early 1980s towards combating inflation rather than maintaining full employment represented a watershed in international economic policy. The fixed exchange rate mechanism established at Bretton Woods had broken down; the world economy reverted to the prewar state of chronic mass unemployment; and the prevalence of monetarist and free market thinking among the political leadership of the industrial nations effectively ruled out any major structural reforms in the management of the world economy.
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Notes
For example, in a detailed discussion of the problem of setting a coordinated set of targets for surpluses and deficits, Polak argues that it is impractical and reconciliation is best left to the market. Polak, J.J., ‘Comment on Andrew Crockett, “The Role of International Institutions in Surveillance and Policy Coordination”’. in Bryant, R.C. et al. (eds), Macro-Economic Policies in an Interdependent World (Brookings, CEPR, IMF, 1989). See also Currie, D.A., Holtham, G. and Hughes Hallett, A, ‘The Theory and Practice of International Policy Coordination: Does Coordination Pay?’. in Bryant et al, Macro-Economic Policies in an Interdependent World.
Stewart, F., ‘Biasses in global markets: can the forces of inequity and marginalisation be modified?’. in Haq, M. ul, Jolly, R. and Haq, K. (eds), The UN and the Bretton Woods Institutions: New Challenges for the Twenty-First Century (1995).
For discussions of the present role of the Fund see: Crockett, A, ‘The Role of International Institutions in Surveillance and Policy Coordination’. in Bryant et al, Macro-Economic Policies in an Interdependent World; Finch, CD., IMF Surveillance and the G24, International Monetary and Finandal Issues for the 1990s, Vol. II (UNCTAD, 1993); Pulling Together: The IMF in a Multipolar World (Overseas Development Council, Washington, DC, 1989).
Williamson, J. and Miller, M.H., ‘Targets and Indicators: A Blueprint for the Coordination of Economic Policy’. Institute for International Economics, Washington DC: Policy Analyses in International Economics, No. 22 (September 1987).
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© 1997 John Grieve Smith
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Smith, J.G. (1997). A Global Payments Strategy. In: Full Employment: A Pledge Betrayed. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372382_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372382_11
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