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International Financial Institutions (international + financial_institution)
Selected AbstractsThe Regulatory State and Turkish Banking Reforms in the Age of Post-Washington ConsensusDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2010Caner Bakir ABSTRACT The new era of the Post-Washington Consensus (PWC), promoted under the auspices of International Financial Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, centres on the need to develop sound financial regulation and strong regulatory institutions, especially in the realm of banking and finance in post-financial crisis developing countries. This article uses an examination of the Turkish banking sector experience with the PWC in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis to show its considerable strengths and weaknesses. The authors argue that the emergent regulatory state in the bank-based financial system has a narrow focus on strengthening prudential regulation, whilst ignoring the increased ,financialization' of the Turkish economy. They identify the positive features of the new era of the PWC in terms of prudential regulation, which has become much more robust in its ability to withstand external shocks. At the same time, however, the article highlights some of the limitations of the new era which resemble the limitations of the PWC. These include the distributional impact of the regulatory reforms within the banking sector, and notably the emergence of foreign banks as the major beneficiaries of this process; weaknesses in promoting productive bank intermediation that finance the real economy and economic growth, leading to poverty reduction via growth of employment whilst stimulating financialization within the economy; and finally, the exclusive focus on prudential regulation, whilst ignoring regulatory costs, consumer protection and competition regulation. [source] The World Development Report: concepts, content and a Chapter 12,JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2001Robert Chambers The World Development Report (WDR) process set new standards for openness and consultation. Its concepts and content are a major advance on its 1990 predecessor. The intention that its concepts and content should be influenced by voices of the poor was partly fulfilled. Conceptually, the VOP findings support the multidimensional view of poverty as ,pronounced deprivation of wellbeing', and the use of income-poverty to describe what is only one dimension of poverty (though this welcome usage is not consistent throughout in the WDR). Two concepts or analytical orientations were not adopted: powerlessness and disadvantage seen as a multidimensional interlinked web; and livelihoods. On content, three areas where the influence fell short were: how the police persecute and impoverish poor people; the diversity of the poorest people; and the significance of the body as the main but vulnerable and indivisible asset of many poor people. A weakness of the WDR is its lack of critical self-awareness. Chapter 11 is self-serving for the International Financial Institutions: it lumps loans with grants as concessional finance; it makes liberal use of the term donor, but never lender; and it does not consider debt avoidance as a strategy. The Report ends abruptly, a body without a head. Its multidimensional view of poverty is not matched by a multidimensional view of power and responsibility. A Chapter 12 is crying out to be written. This would confront issues of professional, institutional and personal commitment and change. It would stress critical reflection as a professional norm, disempowerment for democratic diversity as institutional practice, and personal values, attitudes and courageous behaviour as primary and crucial if development is to be change that is good for poor people. A new conclusion is suggested for the WDR, and a title for the World Development Report 2010. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Designing and aligning an HR systemHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2001Kathy Monks This article reports the results of a study conducted in the wholesale banking arm of a major international financial institution in Ireland. This took a multi-level perspective in exploring the construction of the HR system at group, divisional and strategic business unit (SBU) levels within the firm. The findings suggest that it is critical to consider the level of analysis in both the construction of theHR system and in its operation at different levels within the multi-divisional firm. The research found that it is at SBU level that a coherent HR system is most likely to emerge, as at this level appropriate processes can be adopted to implement HR policies, practices and philosophies. However, the negotiations and interpretations of HR practice that dominate traditional divisional/business unit arrangements may be detrimental to theemergence of a coherent HRsystem. [source] Corporate Governance in ASEAN Financial Corporations: reality or illusion?CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2007Wiparat Chuanrommanee According to Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia, Singapore has the best corporate governance practices in Asia. Malaysia has had the biggest improvements in governance overtime. Thailand lags behind both in achieving appropriate governance. This paper considers recent developments in corporate governance through the analysis of the corporate websites of financial corporations in these countries. The study finds that the corporate governance practices of Thai, Malaysian and Singaporean financial corporations are consistent with international best practices. Corporate governance as presented in company documents probably does not actually reflect real corporate governance practices. These practices do not have an impact on company performance. The level of corporate governance reported is also not consistent with the ratings from international financial institutions such as Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia and Standard & Poor's. These findings suggest that corporate governance in ASEAN is more illusion than fact. [source] Global Environmental Governance and the Challenge of Shadow States: The Impact of Illicit Sapphire Mining in MadagascarDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 5 2005Rosaleen Duffy The environment has become a key site of global governance because of its transboundary nature: forests, wildlife and oceans have all become central foci for networks of global governance which link international organizations, international financial institutions, states and non-governmental organizations. This article examines how contemporary forms of global governance can be challenged and even subverted. It uses the concept of shadow states introduced by William Reno to explore how invisible global networks flow through developing states, to show how they constitute important political and economic interest groups, and to assess what kinds of environmental impact they have. It explores how powerful these networks are, and whether they are able to challenge or subvert attempts to manage, control or govern the environment. The author provides an analysis of the ways in which the clandestine networks of shadow states impact on conservation initiatives in the developing world, focusing on the features of global environmental governance and the problems posed by illicit gem mining and trafficking in Madagascar. [source] The Politics of Service Delivery ReformDEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 1 2004Richard Batley This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal,agent framework, comparing reality with an ,ideal' situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy-makers as their agents, and policy-makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors , international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ,principals' in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms. [source] A tale of two cities: restoring water services in Kabul and MonroviaDISASTERS, Issue 4 2009Jean-François Pinera Kabul and Monrovia, the respective capitals of Afghanistan and Liberia, have recently emerged from long-lasting armed conflicts. In both cities, a large number of organisations took part in emergency water supply provision and later in the rehabilitation of water systems. Based on field research, this paper establishes a parallel between the operations carried out in the two settings, highlighting similarities and analysing the two most common strategies. The first strategy involves international financial institutions, which fund large-scale projects focusing on infrastructural rehabilitation and on the institutional development of the water utility, sometimes envisaging private-sector participation. The second strategy involves humanitarian agencies, which run community-based projects, in most cases independently of the water utilities, and targeting low-income areas. Neither of these approaches manages to combine sustainability and universal service. The paper assesses their respective strengths and weaknesses and suggests ways of improving the quality of assistance provided. [source] Religious actors, civil society and the development agenda: The dynamics of inclusion and exclusionJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2010Duncan McDuie-Ra Abstract This article uses the World Bank's engagement with religious actors to analyse their differentiated role in setting the development agenda raising three key issues. First, engagements between international financial institutions (IFIs) and religious actors are formalised thus excluding many of the actors embedded within communities in the South. Secondly, the varied politics of religious actors in development are rarely articulated and a single position is often presented. Thirdly, the potential for development alternatives from religious actors excluded from these engagements is overlooked, due in part to misrecognition of the mutually constitutive relationship between secular and sacral elements in local contexts. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Negotiating Globalization: Global Scripts and Intermediation in the Construction of Asian Insolvency RegimesLAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY, Issue 3 2006Bruce G. Carruthers This article draws from a larger research project on the globalization of bankruptcy law that includes (1) a time-series analysis of all bankruptcy reforms worldwide from 1973 to 1998; (2) participation observation, several hundred interviews and documentary analysis of international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), international professional associations (International Bar Association, International Federation of Insolvency Practitioners), and world governance organizations (OECD, U.N. Commission on International Trade Law); and (3) case studies of Indonesia, Korea, and China. The globalization of law is a negotiated process. Our research on international organizations and case studies of China, Indonesia, and South Korea indicates that negotiation of the global/local relationship varies by the vulnerability of a country to global forces. Nation-states vary (1) in their balance of power vis-à-vis global actors; and (2) in their social and cultural distance from the global. Yet even where the global/local gap is wide and the asymmetry of power is pronounced, local responses to global pressures are negotiated as much as imposed. Negotiating globalization relies on direct and mediated interactions by several types of intermediaries who translate global scripts into four kinds of outcomes. The impact of intermediaries in this process varies by the phase of the reform in which they participate. Finally, globalizing law proceeds through recursive cycles of lawmaking and law implementation. [source] Conditionality, coercion and other forms of ,Power': international financial institutions in the PacificPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION & DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2002Peter Larmour Research on conditionality has cast doubt on its effectiveness. Nevertheless, international financial institutions have continued to apply policy conditions to loans to developing country governments. The article aims to contribute to the current debate about conditionality in two ways. Empirically, it introduces recent evidence from countries and institutions not included in earlier studies (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Papua New Guinea, and the Asian Development Bank in the South Pacific). Conceptually, it introduces arguments from political science to extend our understanding of the power relationships involved. Some conditions have clearly been applied coercively, particularly on ,Green' issues. Donors have also controlled the agenda of negotiations. But more productive and disciplinary forms of power are shown to be at work in conditionality, as in other forms of aid. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] OPTIMAL FOREIGN BORROWING REVISITEDTHE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2010HYEON-SEUNG HUH Foreign capital has become increasingly important in financing investment and growth in developing countries. Foreign capital flows, however, can be volatile as is evident from the recent financial crises. It has also recently been noted by researchers that there is little systematic empirical evidence that foreign capital contributes to the economic growth of developing countries. In this context, this paper attempts to theoretically reevaluate the borrowing behaviour of a developing economy that relies on foreign borrowing for its capital formation. In particular, this paper investigates the implications of different lending policies of international financial institutions. It is found that no matter whether the borrowing interest rate increases with the level of foreign debt per capita or with the foreign-capital/total-capital ratio, the economy always moves toward the stationary state. The result holds even when the representative agent regards the interest rate given as constant. This implies that foreign borrowing does help economic growth, irrespective of lending policies of international financial institutions. [source] EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES AND MONETARY COOPERATION: LESSONS FROM EAST ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA,THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2004TAKATOSHI ITO This paper analyses the mechanisms of, and draws lessons from, currency crises in Asian and Latin American countries in the 1990s and 2000s. In Asian countries fiscal deficits were insignificant in size, and were not part of a crisis trigger, while in Latin America they played a major role in the crisis story. Crisis management by international financial institutions has been evolving over the last 10 years, and private-sector involvement (PSI) has occupied centre-stage in efforts to reform the international financial architecture. Sovereign debts, a focus of PSI discussions, were neither a cause nor a propagation of the Asian crises. [source] The New Nigerien Hausa Diaspora in the U.S.: surviving and building community on the margins of the global economyCITY & SOCIETY, Issue 1 2004SCOTT M. YOUNGSTEDT This paper focuses on new Nigerien Hausa diaspora communities in U.S. cities. The economic and political policies of nation-states and international financial institutions exacerbate the abject poverty of Niger and impel Hausa to migrate to the U.S. where they work in the shadows of the formal economy or in the globalized informal economy. They rely on fluid, overlapping face-toface, imagined, and virtual communities to mitigate their marginalized position. Nigerien Hausa are creatively mediating and adapting global technologies of time-space compression,especially the Internet, telephones, and electronic money transfer services,to benefit and link their already established and newly emergent communities in diaspora. Based on multi-sited ethnographic evidence, this paper highlights the culturally specific ways that Nigerien Hausa navigate through global constraints and opportunities in their active efforts to survive and support their transnational families and communities, while maintaining dignity and solidarity. [source] | |||||||||||||