Beyond Bretton Woods Workshop, Sept. 15, 2017

The inaugural workshop of the GDP Center in partnership with the Pardee School for Global Studies was held on September 15, 2017. The workshop was titled  “BEYOND BRETTON WOODS:  Complementarity and Competition in the International Economic Order.” The workshop brought together scholars who have been researching developmental financial arrangements in emerging market and developing countries to examine the extent to which the dynamics of such institutions can be explained by existing theoretical perspectives in international political economy and other related literatures.

Much of the existing literature to date on institutions that provide short-term liquidity support or long run development finance has focused on the large Western-backed multi-lateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and various regional development banks.  Over the past decades a number of developing country-led financial institutions have arisen but have been the subject of significantly less scholarly attention.  In terms of liquidity arrangements, the Latin American Reserve Fund and the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization are relatively under-studied.  With respect to development banks the Islamic Development Bank, the Latin American Development bank and numerous national development banks have also received relatively little attention in the study of international political economy and international organizations.

In the lead up to and in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, a number of new institutions have been created, such as the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, EFSD, and a variety of south-south bi-lateral swap arrangements.  In terms of development banks, the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the rise of China’s national development bank as a global player continue to change the landscape of international institutions in this policy space.

This changing landscape has spawned a debate in the literature centering on how scholars should view the emergence of such alternative institutions and what the implications are for the Bretton Woods institutions. Workshop participants were asked to present draft papers on one or more of these institutions and examine the extent to which the dynamics of these institutions pose new questions for the broader literature. This workshop endeavored to establish a more complete picture of the landscape of developmental financial institutions for both liquidity provision and long-run development finance.

Full participant list, biographies and abstracts can be found here.