Global Macroeconomic and Financial Governance

Viewed as a system, global macroeconomic and financial cooperation has three basic objectives. The first is global financial stability, which should be understood as the prevention of financial crises and better management of them when they occur. The second is international macroeconomic stability, and should be understood as guaranteeing an adequate supply of liquidity at the international level and the global coherence of macroeconomic policies that are designed at the national level (regional in the case of monetary policy in the Eurozone), particular those of major economies. The third objective is channeling financing to development functions, particularly to developing countries which do not access to private financing or during those periods in which private financing dries out; an additional function which has been added to these institutions is their contribution to the financing of global and regional public goods.
This paper analyzes the nature of global cooperation in these areas. It is divided in six sections, the first of which is this introduction. The three following sections deal, in a consecutive manner, with the three objective of global macroeconomic and financial cooperation just mentioned, the advances that have been made in recent years and the gaps that remain. The fifth analyzes institutional issues of global governance in these areas. The last draws some brief conclusions.