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Imf and Its Role in International Political Economy

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IMF and its role in International Political Economy Political economy is not a new word for us because of the close relationships between politics and the economy. The development in politics is due to the development in society and the development in society is mostly driven by the economy. The parallel existence and mutual interaction of ‘state’ and ‘market’ in the modern world creates ‘political economy’; without both state and market there could be no political economy (Gilpin, 2003, P9). Market allocates resources to a particular group, class or region where conditions are most favorable. As a consequence, market economies result in the uneven development both domestically and internationally. As our issue is about international …show more content…

Under this program, Saudi Arabia and other oil exporting countries have provided significant resources derived from their balance-of-payment surplus to poor countries. When oil prices quadrupled in 1973-1974, the IMF used assets from the surpluses of the oil-exporting countries to provide assistance to countries that faced a significant increase in the cost of energy imports (Goddard, 2003, P249, Par. 4). The IMF also offered financing assistance, which was known as large stand-by arrangements to industrial countries like Italy and the U.K. The reason was these countries, to some extent, could not adjust their policies to manage the price shock successfully. The wide-spread oil price rise would have been an unexpected negative impact on world economy, but the situation could be much worse without the on-time policies made by the IMF. Even though the IMF played an important role in dealing with the oil price shock, defects still existed. As Anne Krueger, the Acting Managing Director of the IMF, said in a report: “Failure to heed warnings by the Fund will inevitably lead to crisis in some causes. Crisis in individual countries have been frequent, but they have rarely brought widespread description to the global financial system. I come back to my point: that the multilateral framework put in place in the post-war decades has served the international economy well. (Krueger, June3 2004)” The price shock

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