Newest Book
Capital Ideas: The IMF and the Rise of Financial Liberalization (Princeton University Press, 2010)
The right of governments to employ capital controls has always been the official orthodoxy of the International Monetary Fund, and the organization's formal rules providing this right have not changed significantly since the IMF was founded in 1945. But informally, among the staff inside the IMF, these controls became heresy in the 1980s and 1990s, prompting critics to accuse the IMF of indiscriminately encouraging the liberalization of controls and precipitating a wave of financial crises in emerging markets in the late 1990s. In Capital Ideas, I explore the inner workings of the IMF to understand how its staff's thinking about capital controls changed so radically. In doing so, I also provide an important case study of how international organizations work and evolve.
Drawing on original survey and archival research, extensive interviews, and scholarship from economics, politics, and sociology, I trace the evolution of the IMF's approach to capital controls from the 1940s through spring 2009 and the first stages of the subprime credit crisis. I show that IMF staff vigorously debated the legitimacy of capital controls and that these internal debates eventually changed the organization's behavior - despite the lack of major rule changes. I also show that the IMF exercised a significant amount of autonomy despite the influence of member states. Normative and behavioral changes in international organizations, I conclude, are driven not just by new rules but also by the evolving makeup, beliefs, debates, and strategic agency of their staffs.
Articles, Book Chapters and Reviews
Articles and Book Chapters
- 'The Crisis in Global Finance: Political Economy Perspectives on International Financial Regulatory Change'. In Beyond National Boundaries: Building a World without Walls. (Seoul: Academy of Korean Studies, forthcoming).
- 'Creating Policy Stigmas in Financial Governance: The International Monetary Fund and Capital Controls'. In Governance of the Finance Sector, edited by David Mayes (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
- 'How Do Crises Lead to Change?: Liberalizing Capital Controls in the Early Years of New Order Indonesia', World Politics, 62, no. 3 (2010), pp. 496-527. | Read Article
- 'Shrinking the State: Neoliberal Economists and Social Spending in Latin America.' In Constructing the International Economy, edited by Rawi Abdelal, Mark Blyth, and Craig Parsons. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), pp. 23-46. | Read Chapter
- 'IMF Surveillance: "Getting Tough" on Exchange Rate Policies.' In Beyond the Dollar: Rethinking the International Monetary System, edited by Paola Subacchi and John Driffill. (London: Chatham House, 2010), pp. 52-56. | Read Report [This article, along with a selection of others from the report, was translated into Chinese and appeared in China Reform, no. 315 (May 2010), pp. 64-67. | Read Translation]
- 'Organizational Change "From Within": Exploring the World Bank's Early Lending Policies', Review of International Political Economy, 15, no. 4 (2008), pp. 481-505. | Read Article
- 'International Liquidity Provision: The IMF and the World Bank in the Treasury and Marshall Systems, 1942-1957.' In Orderly Change: International Monetary Relations since Bretton Woods edited by David Andrews (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), pp. 73-116. | Read Chapter
- 'Normative Change "From Within": The International Monetary Fund's Approach to Capital Account Liberalization', International Studies Quarterly, 52, no. 1 (2008), pp. 129-158.
- 'Neoliberal Economists and Capital Account Liberalization in Emerging Markets', International Organization, 61, no. 2 (2007), pp. 443-463. | Read Article (Copyright © 2007 by Cambridge University Press. Used with permission of the publisher.)
- 'Testing and Measuring the Role of Ideas: The Case of Neoliberalism in the International Monetary Fund', International Studies Quarterly, 51, no. 1 (2007), pp. 5-30.
- 'Counterfactuals and the Study of the American Presidency', Presidential Studies Quarterly, 32, no. 2 (2002), pp. 293-327.
Book Reviews
- Andreas Busch. 2009. Banking Regulation and Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press). Elliot Posner. 2009. The Origins of Europe's New Stock Markets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Perspectives on Politics, 8, no. 1 (2010), pp. 395-396. | Read Review (With kind permission of Cambridge University Press)
- Grigore Pop Eleches. 2008. From Economic Crisis to Reform: IMF Programs in Latin America and Eastern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Review of International Organizations, 4, no. 2 (2009), pp. 215-218. | Read Review (With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media)
Working Papers and Works in Progress
Working Papers
- 'The World Bank, Stabilization Loans, and Balance of Payments Financing: "Lost" Pieces of the Bretton Woods Liquidity Architecture', European Union Center of California Working Paper (Claremont, CA: Scripps College, 2006). | Read Working Paper
- 'U.S. Policy, IMF Financing Arrangements, and the Coercive Diffusion of Capital Account Liberalization to Emerging Markets', European University Institute Working Paper RSCAS 2005/06 (San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy: European University Institute, 2005). | Read Working Paper
Works in Progress
- Societal Expectations, Economic Crises, and Political Outcomes (with Andrew Walter - London School of Economics).
- Cheerleading for Policy Goals: The International Monetary Fund and Capital Account Liberalization in Emerging Markets.
- Fashions and Fads in Finance: Contingent Emulation and the Political Economy of Sovereign Wealth Fund Creation. | Read Paper
- Financial Crises and Political Turnover:A Long Run Panoramic View (with Andrew Walter − London School of Economics).
- "Shopping with the Sisters": Principals, Organizational Culture, and Institutional Strategies for Balance-of-Payments Financing.
- "The Silent Revolution": Professional Training, Sympathetic Interlocutors, and IMF Lending. | Read Paper