How Much Does The IMF Care About Inequality? Dynamics Of Fragmented Institutional Change And Mission-Consistent Adaptation

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2024

Published In

Oxford Handbook Of The International Monetary Fund

Abstract

Employing text data analysis on over 6,500 International Monetary Fund (IMF) documents from different operational units of the organization, this chapter first finds that the IMF’s approach to inequality has changed over the past two decades, but in a manner that is uneven across the different constituent parts of the organization. This evidence lends further support to the notion of IMF and IO “fragmented change” developed by Kaya and Reay (2019). Second, the chapter finds that while inequality now is more prominent in the IMF’s policy advice, it matters only insofar as inequality is related to core macroeconomic issues—institutional change has occurred in a “mission-consistent” manner. Thus, the IMF has more focus on inequality in institutional thinking but less in institutional output.

Keywords

IMF, inequality, Washington Consensus, Global Financial Crisis, surveillance, lending, fragmented change, institutional change, institutional adaptation, transmission mechanisms

Published By

Oxford University Press

Editor(s)

M. Hibbe and B. Momani

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