Martin Sandbu writes on the tension between “greater integration” and “less integration” among member countries here.
Author: Philip Lane
This book by Liaquat Ahamed (with photos by Eli Reed) provides a “behind the scenes” narrative of how the IMF operates, including a substantial section on its role in the Irish crisis. It is an unusual book, with lots of photos (it is not possible to buy an e-book version) and is collaboration between Writers in Residence, Visual Editions and Magnum Photos.
One interesting passage on page 111 (as part of the book’s coverage of the role of Ashoka Mody):
“During the annual review in 2009, and again in early 2010, Mody urged Lenihan to take advantage of the IMF’s credit facilities and borrow pre-emptively. Mody saw this both as a way of shoring up Ireland’s finances and using the IMF imprimatur to bolster foreign confidence in Ireland. But both times, either Lenihan was not himself persuaded, or he was unable to convince his cabinet colleagues.”
The IMF WP version of my paper on this topic (joint with Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti) is available here.
Summary: This paper has two objectives. First, it reviews the recent dynamics of global imbalances (both “flow” and “stock” imbalances), with a special focus on the shifting position of Latin America in the global distribution. Second, it examines the cross-country variation in external adjustment over 2008-2012. In particular, it shows how pre-crisis external imbalances have strong predictive power for post-crisis macroeconomic outcomes, allowing for variation across different exchange rate regimes. We emphasize that the bulk of external adjustment has taken the form of “expenditure reduction”, with “expenditure switching” only playing a limited role.
The entry of Lithuania into the eurosystem in 2015 will trigger the long-planned vote rotation system at the governing council: see ECB FAQ here, the 2002 press release here that explains the change in the ECB voting system to cater for enlargement (as envisaged in the Treaty of Nice) and the revelation in today’s Sunday Independent here.