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The global financial crisis has magnified the role of Financial Sector Surveillance (FSS) in the International Monetary Fund's activities. This chapter surveys the various steps and initiatives through which the Fund has increasingly deepened its involvement in FSS. Overall, this process can be characterised by a preliminary stage and two main phases. The preliminary stage dates back to the 1980s and early 1990s, and was mainly related to the Fund's research and technical assistance activities within the process of monetary and financial deregulation embraced by several member countries. The first ‘official’ phase of the Fund's involvement in FSS started in the aftermath of the Mexican crisis, and relates to the international call to include financial sector issues among the core areas of Fund surveillance. The second phase focuses on the objectives of bringing the coverage of financial sector issues ‘up-to-par’ with the coverage of other traditional core areas of surveillance, and of integrating financial analysis into the Fund's analytical macroeconomic framework. By urging the Fund to give greater attention to its member countries' financial systems, the international community's response to the global crisis may mark the beginning of a new phase of FSS. The Fund's financial sector surveillance, particularly on advanced economies, is of paramount importance for emerging market and developing countries, as they are vulnerable to spillover effects from crises originated in advanced economies. Emerging market and developing economies, which constitute the majority of the Fund's 187 members, are currently the recipients of over 50 programmes of financial support from the Fund (including those of a precautionary nature), totalling over $250 billion.

This chapter investigates the impact of policy interest rate news from the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB) on stock returns and volatilities of U.S. NYSE and German DAX listed commercial banks. We find that Fed news has the most influence on both U.S. and German listed bank stocks and an unexpected policy rate increase (decrease) lowers (raises) returns and raises volatility in the majority of cases. On the other hand, ECB news generally increases bank stock volatility in the United States but has little impact within its own domestic banking industry. While our results for the U.S. listed banks confirm that their stock prices are more responsive in bad economic times and also during periods of monetary tightening, we find disparities for German banks suggesting that U.S. and European banking industries respond heterogeneously to monetary policy news but the Global Financial Crisis increased the sensitivity of all banks to monetary policy news.

Social scientists have increasingly turned to constructivist models to explain when, and how, international and world-level social forces constrain the policy-making autonomy of national states. While constructivists have shown that international ideational processes matter for domestic policy making, they have had a harder time explaining why some ideas gain prominence in policy discussions while others do not. This chapter develops an institutionally centered materialist model of idea selection, arguing that international relations of dependency give actors who control vital financial resources a greater capacity to shape the ideational agenda. This model is explored through a case study of the international sources of American monetary policy in the early 1960s. A detailed examination of archival materials shows that European officials at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were able to advance their own ideas for American monetary policy because the United States was dependent on European cooperation to help resolve its mounting balance of payments problems.

The Asian Monetary Fund, proposed during the 1997–1998 Asian Financial Crisis, was an attempt by East Asian nations to develop collective policy responses to financial crises and provide rapid distribution of emergency funding. It was envisaged that policy prescriptions would exhibit greater regional sensitivity and prevent contagion. The proposal was rejected because of the perceived perpetuation of moral hazard, duplication and conflict with the International Monetary Fund and belief that historical disunity would prevent successful collaboration. This paper advocates, in the context of international financial architecture reform, enhanced East Asian regionalism is crucial to prevent and manage future financial crises.

Soon after the Lehman crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) surprised its critics with a reconsideration of its research and advice on fiscal policy. The paper traces the influence that the Fund’s senior management and research elite has had on the recalibration of the IMF’s doctrine on fiscal policy. The findings suggest that overall there has been some selective incorporation of unorthodox ideas in the Fund’s fiscal doctrine, while the strong thesis that austerity has expansionary effects has been rejected. Indeed, the Fund’s new orthodoxy is concerned with the recessionary effects of fiscal consolidation and, more recently, endorses calls for a more progressive adjustment of the costs of fiscal sustainability. These changes notwithstanding, the IMF’s adaptive incremental transformation on fiscal policy issues falls short of a paradigm shift and is best conceived of as an important recalibration of the precrisis status quo.