Recent and Forthcoming Activities of the Global Economic Institutions Programme

15 May 1999 - Historical Credibility: Implications for the Reform of the International Monetary System

18 June 1999 - Macroeconomic Policy Coordination

5-6th May 2000 - End of Programme Meeting on the Architecture of Global Economic Institutions

Historical Credibility: Implications for the Reform of the International Monetary System. London: Saturday May 15.

There was a one-day workshop at CEPR on 15 May on the policy issues arising from the work in the GEI Programme by Ronnie MacDonald (Strathclyde University) and Michael Bordo (Rutgers University) on quantitative economic history. That work on regime credibility has important policy implications for the design of the international monetary system and for the kinds of institutions necessary to ensure that it functions efficiently. The meeting enabled that work to be brought to a wider audience, it was examined in interaction with a number of specialist academics in the area. Participants discussed the results, and implications for reform of the international monetary system, of a number of papers about the credibility of different regimes in the history of the international monetary system.

Macroeconomic Policy Coordination. London: Friday 18 June  

There will be a one-day workshop on 18 June on international macroeconomic policy cooperation issues, arising out of the LBS project in the GEI Programme on international policy coordination. This workshop will bring together the small active international community working on these issues. The reason for organising this meeting is that the international economic environment is particularly fragile at present: countries hit by the Asian crisis are trying to recover by exporting like mad, but their markets are still depressed because Japan is still bombed out; Europe is displaying extreme caution; and the US is likely to be slowing rapidly. This may be an exceptionally difficult environment to manage; it may raise important challenges for global macroeconomic policy co-ordination. The meeting will be organised to enable informal discussion of these questions, and will include presentations from the IMF, from NIESR in London, and from Warwick McKibbin (Brookings and ANU).

Reforming the Architecture of Global Economic Institutions. End of Programme Conference for the GEI Programme. London: Friday 5 May and Saturday 6 May 2000

This conference is the End of Programme Meeting of the ESRC's Global Economic Institutions (GEI) Research Programme. It comes at a time when there has been a lot of inconclusive work on 'global architecture' and it will enable the major UK Research Programme on this subject to make a forward-looking contribution to global debate on the issues. Speakers at the meeting will be grouped into five or six themes. These will include trade, finance, regulation and standards-setting, governance, development, and macroeconomic surveillance. The themes have been chosen so as to cover the major strands of the GEI Programme and to cover major areas of global debate. Speakers and participants will be drawn from both the academic and policy communities. In each of the sessions there will be papers(s) from one or more academic speakers(s) and a paper, or detailed comments, from one or more policy-maker(s). The work by project holders in the GEI Programme will form the background of what is to be discussed. There will also be a broad overview paper.