IMF conditionality has been severely criticised by developing countries, who accuse the Fund of unjustly provoking political turmoil and causing poverty. This refers to the policies that a member country is required to follow in order to be able to use the Fund's resources. Conditionality is legally based on the requirement to adopt `adequate safeguards' for the use of resources as stipulated by the IMF's Articles of Agreement. This work focuses on legal implications and policy aspects and, more specifically, on the question of how far-reaching the requirement of `adequate safeguards' may be. Furthermore, the author demonstrates that conditionality is also affected by cooperative arrangements with other institutions, such as the World Bank and United Nations. A major conclusion is that there should be improvements in cooperation and in the monitoring of the application of Fund law on conditionality. Scholars and students who take a deep interest in international economic relations will find this book a unique opportunity to study the legal framework of conditionality. Government officials preparing for negotiations with the Fund will also benefit from reading this work.

With single-digit inflation and substantial financial deepening, developing countries are adopting more flexible and forward-looking monetary policy frameworks and ascribing a greater role to policy interest rates and inflation objectives. While some countries have adopted formal inflation targeting regimes, others have developed frameworks with greater target flexibility to accommodate changing money demand, use of policy rates to signal the monetary policy stance, and implicit inflation targets.

The twenty-one contributions in this book assess the controversy surrounding the Fund and provide judgments about the criteria for Fund lending which should help readers understand and analyze both its ongoing role in smoothing adjustment to international payments imbalances and its currently critical position in responding to the debt crisis.

The global financial crisis and subsequent sovereign debt crisis in Europe demonstrated that the relationship between law and economics in the design of the monetary system must be revisited. International monetary affairs are usually conducted via domestic monetary policies which are formulated by independent central banks and informed mainly by economics, without much room being left to substantive law. Based on the 2012 World Trade Forum, this volume brings together leading scholars, practitioners and policy makers in international economic law in order to examine the potential of law and legal methodology to contribute to international monetary stability. It explores the links between and lessons to be learnt from existing international investment and trading systems and studies some specific policy issues which have a direct impact on monetary affairs, such as exchange rate policy, sovereign debt, taxation, competitiveness, trade imbalances, austerity programmes and human rights.

In this set of interdisciplinary essays leading scholars discuss the future of the Rule of Law, a concept whose meaning and import has become ever more topical and elusive. Historically the term denoted the idea of 'government limited by law'. It has also come to be equated, more broadly, with certain goods suggested by the idea of legality as such, including the preservation of human dignity and other individual and social benefits predicated upon or conducive to a rule-based social order. But in both its narrow and broader senses the Rule of Law remains a much contested concept. These essays seek to capture the main areas and levels of controversy by 'relocating' the Rule of Law not just at the philosophical level, but also in its main contemporary arenas of application - both national, and increasingly, supranational and international.

Well-designed banking laws are critical for regulating the market access and operations of banks, as well as their removal from the market in case of failure. While at a financial policy level there is a broad consensus as to the content of banking laws, from a legal perspective their drafting often leaves something to be desired. In spite of what is often argued, the types of weaknesses of banking laws are hardly country-specific; many weaknesses are shared by many banking laws. This working paper discusses those weaknesses and ways to remedy them, by focusing on a selected set of legal policy principles.

An IMF paper reviewing the policy responses of Indonesia, Korea and Thailand to the 1997 Asian crisis, comparing the actions of these three countries with those of Malaysia and the Philippines. Although all judgements are still tentative, important lessons can be learned from the experiences of the last two years.