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"Advancing Regional Monetary Cooperation examines regional monetary cooperation as a strategy to enhance macroeconomic stability in developing countries and emerging markets. The future of regional monetary cooperation is being questioned by the euro crisis: should developing countries and emerging markets, which are already actively engaged in regional monetary cooperation, refrain from such initiatives to avoid ending up in a crisis? Or should the euro zone crisis be regarded as precisely the reason to pursue regional monetary cooperation, for example in order to jointly shield fragile financial markets against volatility in international financial markets? These are highly relevant questions for the developing world and the future of the global monetary system. This book addresses these questions by reframing traditional theoretical approaches to regional monetary integration in an interdisciplinary way. Special attention is given to the role of emerging markets as anchor countries in regional monetary cooperation. Detailed case studies are provided, which examine stabilizing and destabilizing elements of regional monetary cooperation in Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, and compare these findings with South America in a cross-regional perspective. This book will appeal to an academic audience interested in the interplay of global, domestic and regional arrangements to provide liquidity in periods of crisis. The issues raised are also highly relevant for policy makers confronted with an increasingly multipolar world in which developing areas are looking for adequate ways to integrate at the regional level. "--

Die Opposition wettert was das Zeug hält gegen die neue linke Regierung, bevor ihr Präsident Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva überhaupt im Amt ist. Gute Ratschläge für ihn liest man täglich in der internationalen Presse. Der zukünftige Präsident Brasiliens nimmt es gelassen und bereitet mit seinem Team die erwartungsvolle Wählerschaft und die internationalen Märkte auf das "Krisenjahr 2003" vor. (Lat.am Nachr/DÜI)

AbstractThe global financial safety net (GFSN) has become a complex regime. Regional financial arrangements (RFAs) have emerged alongside established IMF structures. How relevant are RFAs and the IMF in moments of financial crisis? And more specifically: Do member countries resort to RFAs as complements or as substitutes to IMF lending? To answer these questions, we developed an original data‐set on the GSFN use by the 61 emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) that are members of existing RFAs between 1976 and 2018. We find that not only economic criteria such as lending volume, timeliness and conditionality drive patterns of complementarity and substitution in crisis finance, but that RFA governance structure and regional independence matters. The data show that borrower‐dominated RFAs are used much more frequently than creditor‐dominated RFAs. Moreover, RFAs which lack regional policy autonomy but are dependent on the IMF are not called upon – even if they have far superior volumes of potential lending capacity.

ABSTRACTThe so‐called global financial safety net provides backstop insurance during financial crises. The three elements of the global safety net — the IMF, regional financial arrangements (RFAs) and bilateral swap agreements — underwent substantial changes after the global financial crisis. How have these changes influenced their use? What role do RFAs have in the safety net? This contribution addresses these questions by examining the timeliness, volume and policy conditionality of liquidity provision of each of the three elements, using a data set of 50 RFA member countries from the period 1976–2015. The article presents case studies of the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) and the Eurasian Fund for Stabilization and Development (EFSD) to create a deeper institutional understanding of the governance mechanisms of regional funds. The authors find that today's global financial safety net produces inequalities in emergency liquidity provision. In terms of volume, RFAs improve the safety net only for small member countries — about one‐third of the countries in the sample can access sufficient liquidity regionally. The experiences of AMF and EFSD demonstrate that intra‐regional asymmetries of RFAs play a contradictory role: while the participation of large economies leverages liquidity provision, it simultaneously creates difficulties for the governance of the regional body.

The global financial safety net provides backstop during times of financial crises. Its elements underwent fundamental changes since the global financial crisis. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) introduced new facilities on the global level, new regional financial arrangements (RFAs) were created, and bilateral swap agreements emerged as a new element. In this paper, we ask how these changes influence the use of the different safety net options, and what role RFAs have in the safety net today. We created a database with all the cases in which a RFA member drew on one of the elements of the global safety net. This allows us to analyze which other options the country had at hand, and to examine their use along the institutional design in terms of timeliness, volume, and policy conditionality. We find today's global financial safety net to be not a global, but a geographically and structurally scattered net. RFAs make the safety net safer only for small member countries. Just few countries can count on a bilateral swap line, their selection being subject to the discretion of the swap partner. Thus, a large number of countries fall through important knots of the safety net and have the IMF as their only option.

Paulo Vannuchi ist Mitbegründer der brasilianischen Arbeiterpartei PT und seit über zwanzig Jahren als Politikwissenschaftler am Instituto de Cidadania (Institut für Bürgerrechte) in São Paulo tätig. Er ist maßgeblich an der Entwicklung von politischen Zielen und Projekten der PT und daher neuerdings auch der brasilianischen Regierung beteiligt. Die LN sprach mit ihm über seine eigene Rolle in der neuen politischen Landschaft Brasiliens. (Lat.am Nachr/DÜI)

El "no sistema" financiero mundial vigente se caracteriza por la inestabilidad. A falta de soluciones globales, ha surgido una serie de convenios regionales de cooperación monetaria para hacer frente a esta inestabilidad. Este artículo se centra en sistemas regionales de pagos como primer paso de cooperación monetaria regional. A fin de evaluar sus posibles contribuciones para lograr una mayor estabilidad macroeconómica de los países miembros, desarrollamos una tipología de los sistemas de pagos y comparamos de manera sistemática iniciativas históricas y actuales de Europa, Asia y América Latina, utilizando como referencia el Plan Keynes original. Mostramos que los sistemas regionales de pagos implican efectos benéficos en la medida en que reducen los costos de transacción del comercio intrarregional y crean incentivos para una mayor cooperación macroeconómica. Sin embargo, su contribución a la estabilización macroeconómica depende del diseño específico de cada acuerdo regional

Dass Reformen der sozialen Sicherungssysteme in Zeiten leerer Kassen kaum geeignet sind, die Popularität von Politikern in der Bevölkerung zu erhöhen, zeigt sich nicht nur an den Protesten in Italien, Frankreich und Deutschland. Auch die Regierung des brasilianischen Präsidenten Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (Arbeiterpartei PT) provozierte Mitte des Jahres mit ihrem Gesetzentwurf zur Reform des Rentensystems für öffentlich Beschäftige Massendemonstrationen und harsche Kritik aus den eigenen Reihen. Die Lateinamerika Nachrichten sprachen mit Helmut Schwarzer, Staatssekretär der PT für Soziale Sicherheit im Ministerium für Arbeit und Soziales, über den aktuellen Stand, wesentliche Inhalte und Perspektive der Reform. (Lat.am Nachr/DÜI)

Abstract
The global financial safety net (GFSN) has become increasingly voluminous and complex. The ever-increasing capacity for crisis prevention and liquidity support of emergency financing institutions and arrangements at the bilateral, regional, and global level sums up to a total lending capacity of at least US$ 3.5 trillion (Mühlich, L., B. Fritz, W. N. Kring, and K. P. Gallagher. 2020. The Global Financial Safety Net Tracker: Lessons for the COVID-19 Crisis from a New Interactive Dataset. GEGI Policy Brief 10. Boston: Global Development Policy Center. Also available at:www.bu.edu/gdp/files/2020/04/GEGI-GDP_PolicyBrief_FInal.pdf). This represents a more than tenfold increase to available short-term liquidity compared to before the global financial crisis of 2008/09. Yet despite this tremendous increase in resources, the GFSN remains scarcely utilized throughout the COVID-19 crisis. This article develops a framework, that builds upon concepts in economics and international political economy, to analyze GFSN inefficiencies and to evaluate the utilization of the GFSN. Combining balance of payments models with the concept of regime complexity, we analyze and compare patterns of GFSN utilization in response to COVID-19 with past usage. We ask if the current GFSN is adequately built to efficiently respond to such a crisis. We are especially interested in examining the role that the six existing RFAs between EMDEs play in the GFSN.