Chwieroth gives us an in-depth and fair account of what the staff of the International Monetary Fund came to believe about freedom of capital flows and, more importantly, why the IMF holds those beliefs and how its views have evolved over the past six decades. Capital Ideas will be a valuable source for researchers studying one of the key economic policy issues of our time. -- James M. Boughton, author of "Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund, 1979-1989" This is a fascinating and important book that every student of the International Monetary Fund should read and absorb. Chwieroth buttresses his argument with impressive interview and archival research and poses a serious challenge to previous scholarship about the liberalization of global finance. -- Randall Stone, University of Rochester What works so well about Capital Ideas is Jeffrey Chwieroth's commitment to understanding historical change and to the very challenging task of getting inside the 'black box' that is the International Monetary Fund. Chwieroth convincingly knocks down some cherished assumptions about international financial institutions and international organizations more broadly. This is a most interesting book and it is likely to be widely read and become a standard work in the field. -- Timothy J. Sinclair, University of Warwick
List of Figures and Tables ix Preface xi List of Abbreviations xvii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 1 CHAPTER TWO: Normative Change from Within 23 CHAPTER THREE: Capital Ideas and Capital Controls 61 CHAPTER FOUR: Capital Controlled: The Early Postwar Era 105 CHAPTER FIVE: The Limits and Hollowness of Keynesianism in the 1960s 121 CHAPTER SIX: Formal Change and Informal Continuity: The Reform Negotiations of the 1970s 138 CHAPTER SEVEN: Capital Freed: Informal Change from the 1980s to the Mid-1990s 147 CHAPTER EIGHT: Capital in Crisis: Financial Turmoil in the Late 1990s 187 CHAPTER NINE: Norm Continuity and Organizational Legitimacy from the Asian Crisis to the Subprime Crisis 226 EPILOGUE: A Subprime "Crisis" for Capital Freedom? 255 Index 301
Jeffrey M. Chwieroth is senior lecturer in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
This book ... usefully traces the evolution of the thinking about this issue at the International Monetary Fund, the international body most concerned with it. Foreign Affairs Combining archival research, interviews, and his own survey research, [Chwieroth] provides a compelling history of how the IMF gradually changed from supporting capital controls to opposing them... Chwieroth's work fills an important void in the literature. Choice This is a fascinating book... Every economist with an interest in international finance would learn from reading this book, and would enjoy doing so. -- Geoffrey Wood Journal of Financial History Review Jeffrey M. Chwieroth provides the best inside view of the international organization that an outsider can offer... More organizational behavior than international economics, Capital Ideas is an important contribution to the literature on IO governance. -- Anthony Clark Journal of International and Global Studies How do ideas travel and become shared beliefs? Or, more worryingly, how do 'causal beliefs become hardened into articles of faith' (p. 47)? And how do beliefs get turned into policies? In this intelligent, well-researched and thought-provoking book Jeffrey Chwieroth addresses these questions, using the IMF's approach to capital account liberalization as a case study... Capital Ideas is a truly multidisciplinary book whose author draws on economics, international political economy and sociology to explore how an organization fosters, promotes and disseminates ideas. -- Paola Subacchi International Affairs [Capital Ideas] is an absorbing narrative of the varying IMF's intellectual processes at work. Many may find it academic in approach--and it is. Nevertheless, the book is an important read for those who wish to understand our economic environment to be better masters of our own destiny. -- Srikanth Srinivas Businessworld
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