When rules started to rule: the IMF, neo-liberal economic ideas and economic policy change in Britain
When rules started to rule: the IMF, neo-liberal economic ideas and economic policy change in Britain
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DOI：
10.1080/09692290.2011.561124
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发表时间：
2012-01-01
影响因子：
4.3
通讯作者：
Tomlinson, Jim
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Clift, Ben;Tomlinson, Jim
本文重新评估英国经济决策和国际政治经济中的新自由主义转变，特别关注国际货币基金组织 (IMF) 在 20 世纪 60 年代的作用。国际货币基金组织一直利用其贷款的附加条件来尝试制定借款人的政策；在这里，我们探讨了这一条件的不断演变的内容以及支撑它的经济理念。利用最近公布的国际货币基金组织记录以及其他档案，我们认为，国际货币基金组织与英国政府在 20 世纪 60 年代之间的谈判可以被视为该基金组织推动宏观经济政策制定从自由裁量权转向基于规则的关键转变的一部分。这一推动发生在对特定政策工具——国内信贷扩张（DCE）——当时被视为货币政策重要措施的斗争中。文章将国际货币基金组织对大连商品交易所的倡导定位为该基金组织试图通过日益具体和具有约束力的规则来限制自由裁量权决策。对此，英国政府官员开始先发制人，甚至欺骗基金组织，以避免受到束缚。我们的分析揭示了国际货币基金组织接受了哪些新自由主义经济思想，并指出了它对货币主义的拒绝。在此描绘的时期（1965-69），基于规则的政权仍然与凯恩斯主义兼容。然而，英国政府勉强接受这一做法，为宏观经济政策制定发生重大质变提供了关键条件，而规则后来变得越来越具有新自由主义特征。
This article reassesses the neo-liberal shift within British economic policy-making and the international political economy, focusing especially the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1960s. The IMF has always used the conditions attached to its lending to try and shape borrower's policy; here we explore the evolving content of that conditionality and the economic ideas underpinning it. Using recently released IMF records, as well as other archives, we argue that the negotiations between the IMF and the UK Government in the 1960s can be seen as part of the Fund's drive towards a crucial change from discretionary to rules-based approaches to macroeconomic policy making. This drive took place within a struggle over a specific policy instrument, domestic credit expansion (DCE), at that time regarded as an important measure of monetary policy. The article locates the IMF advocacy of DCE within an attempt by the Fund to constrain discretionary policy-making through increasingly specific and binding rules. In response, UK Government officials began to pre-empt and even deceive the Fund to avoid being tied down. Our analysis unpacks which neo-liberal economic ideas the Fund embraced, noting its rejection of monetarism. In the period charted here (1965-69), the rules-based regime remained compatible with Keynesianism. However, the UK Government's grudging acceptance of this approach provided a crucial condition of possibility for a significant qualitative shift in macroeconomic policy-making when rules later became infused with an increasingly neo-liberal character.