IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2005-107.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Efficiency and Legitimacy: Trade-Offs in IMF Governance

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Carlo Cottarelli

Abstract

Designing appropriate governance structures for an international financial institution such as the IMF is difficult, because steps to enhance the legitimacy of such an institution through constraints on its decision-making process may affect its operational efficiency. Potential trade-offs between legitimacy and efficiency exist for any public institution but are arguably more severe for an international one, because delegating power to it politically controversial and, thus, likely to imply tighter constraints. The paper also underscores that the trade-offs are not absolute, however: they depend on the specific ways in which legitimacy is pursued-that is, on the specific constraints that are set. Strategic reforms should, thus, aim at improving the terms of the trade-off by exploring steps that are Pareto-improving in the dimensions of legitimacy and efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Carlo Cottarelli, 2005. "Efficiency and Legitimacy: Trade-Offs in IMF Governance," IMF Working Papers 2005/107, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2005/107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=18250
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Woods, Ngaire, 2000. "The Challenge of Good Governance for the IMF and the World Bank Themselves," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 823-841, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Lavigne & Philipp Maier & Eric Santor, 2009. "Renewing IMF surveillance: Transparency, accountability, and independence," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 29-46, March.
    2. Nedergaard, Peter, 2011. "The political economy of the clean development mechanism (CDM) governance system," MPRA Paper 33095, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Manuela Moschella, 2014. "Monitoring Macroeconomic Imbalances: Is EU Surveillance More Effective than IMF Surveillance?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(6), pages 1273-1289, November.
    4. Mr. Jonathan David Ostry & Mr. Jeromin Zettelmeyer, 2005. "Strengthening IMF Crisis Prevention," IMF Working Papers 2005/206, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Robert Lavigne & Philipp Maier & Eric Santor, 2007. "A Vision for IMF Surveillance," Staff Working Papers 07-37, Bank of Canada.
    6. Philipp Maier & Eric Santor, 2008. "Reforming the IMF: Lessons from Modern Central Banking," Discussion Papers 08-6, Bank of Canada.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arts, Bas, 2014. "Assessing forest governance from a ‘Triple G’ perspective: Government, governance, governmentality⁎⁎This article belongs to the Special Issue: Assessing Forest Governance," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 17-22.
    2. Nunnari, Salvatore, 2021. "Dynamic legislative bargaining with veto power: Theory and experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 186-230.
    3. Ali Burak Güven, 2012. "The IMF, the World Bank, and the Global Economic Crisis: Exploring Paradigm Continuity," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 43(4), pages 869-898, July.
    4. Vestergaard, Jakob & Wade, Robert H., 2013. "Protecting Power: How Western States Retain The Dominant Voice in The World Bank’s Governance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 153-164.
    5. Jonathan R. Strand & Kenneth J. Retzl, 2016. "Did Recent Voice Reforms Improve Good Governance within the World Bank?," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(3), pages 415-445, May.
    6. Martin Koch, 2012. "International Organizations in Development and Global Inequality: the Example of the World Bank's Pension Policy," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2012-103, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Mundy, Karen & Verger, Antoni, 2015. "The World Bank and the global governance of education in a changing world order," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 9-18.
    8. Ziya Önis & Fikret Senses, 2003. "Rethinking the Emerging Post-Washington Consensus: A Critical Appraisal," ERC Working Papers 0309, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Sep 2003.
    9. Arthur Foch, 2013. "Explaining the G7 and G10's influence on World Bank decisions: The role of formal and informal rules of governance," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 13035, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    10. Ferreira,Francisco H. G., 2022. "The Analysis of Inequality in the Bretton Woods Institutions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10149, The World Bank.
    11. Gordon Wilson, 2007. "Knowledge, innovation and re-inventing technical assistance for development," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 7(3), pages 183-199, July.
    12. Maekawa, Wakako, 2024. "United Nations peacekeeping operations and multilateral foreign aid: Credibility of good governance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    13. Everett, Jeff & Neu, Dean & Rahaman, Abu Shiraz, 2007. "Accounting and the global fight against corruption," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 513-542, August.
    14. Koch, Martin, 2012. "International Organizations in Development and Global Inequality: The Example of the World Bank's Pension Policy," WIDER Working Paper Series 103, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Rodrigue NANA KUINDJA, 2014. "Quality Of Banking Governance And Financial Development In Africa: The Case Of Cameroon," Review of Economic and Business Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, issue 13, pages 129-149, June.
    16. Heimans, Jeremy., 2004. "Reforming global economic and social governance : a critical review of recent programmatic thinking," ILO Working Papers 993709503402676, International Labour Organization.
    17. Yooneui Kim & Youngwan Kim, 2021. "The autonomy of international organizations? The analysis of major powers’ influence over the World Bank’s aid policies," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 24(3), pages 224-240, September.
    18. Laurent Bouton & Aniol Llorente-Saguer & Frédéric Malherbe, 2014. "Get Rid of Unanimity: The Superiority of Majority Rule with Veto Power," NBER Working Papers 20417, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Jean-Pierre Allegret & Philippe Dulbecco, 2009. "Enforcing the IMF in the Global Economy: An Institutional Analysis," Chapters, in: Claude Gnos & Louis-Philippe Rochon (ed.), Monetary Policy and Financial Stability, chapter 6, pages 117-133, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Paul Nelson, 2006. "The varied and conditional integration of NGOs in the aid system: NGOs and the World Bank," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(5), pages 701-713.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2005/107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.