INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE: In the wake of recent crises, the international community embarked on a range of initiatives to strengthen the international financial architecture. While there is no agreed definition of what constitutes international financial architecture, it refers broadly to the framework and set of measures that can help prevent crises and manage them better in the more integrated international financial environment. Several aspects of the agenda for crisis prevention and crisis resolution deal with weaknesses in the international financial system that potentially contribute to the propensity and magnitude of global instability, hence requiring collective action at the international level. But there is widespread recognition that global financial stability also rests on robust national systems and hence requires enhanced measures at the country level as well.

The World Bank Group's role in this agenda is determined by its mandate of poverty reduction, its familiarity with and involvement in developing countries given its role as a global development institution, and its comparative strengths on social and structural issues:

First and foremost, the World Bank is helping countries assess the social and structural sources of vulnerability and address underlying policy and institutional weaknesses.

Second, the World Bank is contributing to efforts to strengthen economic and financial governance at the global level in its areas of comparative advantage, and to help bring developing country experience and perspectives to the discussions that are underway on reform.

Third, the World Bank is helping countries respond to and manage the consequences of financial crises.

Three important initiatives are underway with the IMF pertaining to international financial architecture (a) the Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes; (b) the Financial Sector Assessment Program; and (c) the preparation of Public Debt Management Guidelines and a complementary Practitioner's Manual on the development of domestic markets for government debt. The World Bank also has strengthened partnerships with the relevant standard setting bodies and other institutions in the areas of corporate governance, accounting and auditing and insolvency regimes to forge a consensus and catalyze concerted actions. In addition, the World Bank is especially concerned with managing the social dimension of economic crises, and supporting social protection to help poor people manage the effect of economic shocks.

REPORTS ON THE OBSERVANCE OF STANDARDS AND CODES: The international community has emphasized the important role of international standards in strengthening the international financial architecture. In a world of integrated capital markets, financial crises in individual countries can imperil international financial stability. This provides a basic public goods rationale for minimum international standards which would benefit both international and individual national systems. At the international level, international standards enhance transparency as well as multilateral surveillance. They help to better identify weaknesses that may contribute to economic and financial vulnerability, foster market efficiency and discipline, and ultimately contribute to a global economy which is more robust and less prone to crisis. At the national level, international standards provide a benchmark that can help identify vulnerabilities as well as guide policy reform. To best serve these objectives, however, the scope and application of such standards needs to be assessed in the context of a country's overall development strategy and tailored to individual country circumstances.

In this connection, the IMF has invited the World Bank to embark on a joint pilot exercise preparing "Reports of the Observance of Standards and Codes" (ROSCs). In this exercise, the two institutions are undertaking a large number of summary assessments of the observance of selected standards relevant to private and financial sector development and stability. These assessments are being collected as "modules" in country binders constituting the "ROSCs." Under this modular approach, the Fund takes the lead in preparing modules in the area of data dissemination and fiscal transparency. Modules for the

financial sector (monetary and financial policy transparency, banking supervision, securities market regulation, payment systems, deposit insurance) are mostly derived as by-products from a parallel Bank-Fund Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). The World Bank has been asked to take the lead in three areas covered by ROSCs: (i) corporate governance, (ii) accounting and auditing, and (iii) insolvency regimes and creditor rights.

The Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC) Progress under the ROSC initiative has been reviewed twice by Bank and Fund.Executive Directors-in February 2001 and in March 2003 - and i s scheduled for review.again in July 200512. In their discussion o f the March 2003 review, the Boards raised thefollowing key issues: 1)greater selectivity and prioritization o f assessments, given scarce capacity. 2)engagement in industrialized country assessments in Bank-led ROSC areas andmechanisms to finance. 3)better prioritization o f ROSC recommendations for reform and better incorporation of the assessments in the Bank’s country work (CASs, TA and lending instruments); 4)step up the involvement o f more international agencies and MDBs in ROSCs assessments and follow up activities.

PROGRESS IN THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTURE AGENDA:

Given it’s role as a development institution and it’s mandate to reduce poverty, themain objectives of the World Bank Group’s involvement in the International Financial Architecture agenda are: (i)contributing to efforts in strengthening economic and financial governance at the globallevel, and bringing developing country experience and perspectives to the discussionsthat are underway on reform (ii)helping countries assess the structural and social sourcesof vulnerability and address the underlying policy and institutional weaknesses; and (iii)helping countries respond to and manage the consequences of crises.

Components of the IFA

IFA at National Level

At the national level there are three goals which are impossible to attain simultaneously (the "impossible trinity" of sustainability of foreign currency debt, a deregulated domestic financial sector, and central bank supervision).

The first policy option is a world of no controls and no intervention which is compatible with attaining a sustainable foreign currency debt and, at the same time, having deregulated access to the domestic financial sector. A second option consists of a world of strict regular controls

which is consistent with the goal of a sustainable foreign currency debt, but also with the goal of a supervision of financial transactions by the central bank. There are very few countries that follow this model. The third option is a world of discretionary interventions; in this world, free access to the domestic financial sector goes along with supervision (of a discretionary nature) by the central bank/ qualified agencies. This third option was chosen by many of the emerging economies that ran into financial turmoil in the last decade of the last century.

IFA at International level

The classical dilemma of stabilization policy is that it is not feasible for a government to allow free movement of capital, to pursue a strategy of a stable exchange rate and to pursue autonomy in its monetary policy simultaneously.

The first policy option is flexible exchange rates. As a matter of fact, many countries did not maintain flexible exchange rates but instead opted for currency pegs (usually against the US dollar) organized as adjustable pegs, crawling pegs or simply some sort of ‘managed floating’.

The second option, that of a fixed exchange rate as exemplified by the historical Gold Standard, and the modern day derivative of this regime, the currency board, offers an alternative where independent monetary policy is not feasible. However, a currency board is not a perfect insulator against speculative attacks and hence against the onset and contagion of financial crises.

IFA at Supranational level

The main International Financial Institutions (IFIs) intermediating in the international sphere are the Bretton Woods Institutions (the IMF and the World Bank), the Regional Development Banks (RDBs) and the Bank of International Settlements.

The International Monetary Fund

John Maynard Keynes was the intellectual mentor of both the IMF and the World Bank. The IMF began operating in 1947 with a fund of $9 billion in gold and currency. In 1969 the IMF created a type of reserve assets called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), which act as the IMF’s unit of account. Each country’s IMF quota, which reflects the relative size of the member country’s economy, determines the member’s voting power, as well as the member’s access to the IMF’s financial resources.

T HE RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT FOR THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ARCHITECTUREThe Asian crisis in 1997 and 1998 was not just a period of financial instability that theworld economy goes through regularly. It was a crisis of the whole financial system. Both theextent of the crisis and the way it spread to the rest of the world capital markets created anawareness of the risks that financial liberalization has for the stability of the global economy.This justified the urgent need for a new international architecture.A context of systemic crises

Throughout the 90.s, the number of crises that had international repercussionsincreased. Rarely in the course of history had the international financial markets experiencedsuch violent adjustments as those that have taken place in recent years: considerable tensionon the bonds market in 1994; the Mexican crisis between December 1994 and February 1995;the collapse of Baring Brothers in February 1995; the Asian stock market crash in the autumnof 1997; financial difficulties in Russia from May to August 1998; the crisis in Brazil betweenNovember 1998 and January 1999; the crisis in Turkey and in Argentina at the beginning of62001 and so on. On these occasions, several things became obvious, particularly the fragilityof the international financial systems and the rationality of the investors which could lead toan increase in the general insecurity and to a rapid transformation of a local shock into aglobal liquidity crisis.These anomalies cannot be attributed to financial competition per se, but rather to thefact that the liberalization of capital movements has usually resulted in a sharp increase inliquid liabilities and notably in short-term currency borrowing through the intermediary of thebanks. This has made the economies concerned much more vulnerable to a change in the stateof confidence, or to a shock in the evaluation of risk by international investors. The Asiancrisis is a perfect illustration of this type of scenario. Because of this, the internationalmobility of capital accentuates and multiplies the sources of instability and crisis, especiallyin developing economies which are still marked, and have been for years, by very close linksbetween banks and governments, the latter guaranteeing the stability of the financialcommitments.However, the Asian crisis has been interpreted in various ways. The crisis was aresponse to a dramatic increase in risk as perceived by international investors resulting in adramatic loss of confidence. But was this loss of confidence justified by the fundamentals inThailand, Indonesia, Korea or in the Philippines? Some would say it was. They consider thiscrisis as the culmination of an unsustainable deterioration in the macro-economicfundamentals and the inevitable consequence of inappropriate policies, even if the scope andextent of the crisis in the region indicates a lack of discernment and an irrational knock-oneffect, in the context of the fragility of the domestic financial markets (Dornbusch, 1998;Corsetti et al., 1999). On the other hand, for other economists, the Asian crisis is seen more asa wave of panic which cannot be directly linked to a sudden worsening of the macroeconomicimbalances. It should rather, they say, be analyzed in terms of self-fulfillingprophecies or sunspots (Krugman, 1998). Whereas the crisis of the peso in Mexico in 1994-1995 was interpreted in terms of the unsustainablility of the current account deficits, the Asiancrisis in 1997-1998 led economists to give greater importance to factors of vulnerability. Theyextended the variables which might explain the crisis to include weaknesses in the financialand banking systems, in the area of prudential standard, referring to the illiquidity crisisbrought about by the self-fulfilling expectations of international investors.Most Asian countries had more or less balanced budgets. They did not haveexpansionary monetary policies that could be considered as irresponsible and their rates ofinflation were not very high. They were not experiencing a rise in current accounts deficits which seemed to be at an acceptable level. Finally, none of them, before the crisis, had thekind of high unemployment levels that might have encouraged them, subsequently, to pursuea more clearly expansionist monetary policy requiring a relaxing of their exchange objectives.The Asian crisis is not, therefore, a conventional currency crisis. It is more like a deepfinancial crisis containing all the ingredients of a systemic crisis. Although it has been definedin various ways (De Bandt and Hartmann, 2000; Aglietta et Moutot, 1993), the notion of a

systemic crisis obviously involves the spread of a local shock on a regional or global level.But it also includes factors that are not taken into account by those who support the theories ofthe efficiency of the markets or rational expectations: failure to see disaster coming, radicaluncertainty, an excessive preference for liquid assets, mimetic effects, global interdependenceand the spreading of the crisis among the different types of financial markets (exchangemarket, bonds market, stock markets, credit market) or on a global scale.Of course, sudden changes of opinion on the financial markets are rarely a response toan unreasonable analysis of a country.s situation or a particular kind of assets. However, theovershooting of the markets, besides the vulnerability that it causes for the traders themselves,very often reveals the short-sighted nature of forecasts and a real lack of discernment in theway they are used. (Cartapanis, 1994, 1998). If a cause for worry appears on a market, thoughit may be considered to be of short duration or even to have no objective justification in theeyes of the traders, predictions are established which spread a feeling of mistrust towardsother markets and other countries in the form of volatility spillovers or shifts in the price ofassets.All this explains why the Washington consensus, advocating the rapid modernizationof financial systems, the extension of securitization, the generalization of the externalconvertibility of currency, and the liberalization of the modes in which interest rates are fixed,is no longer in fashion, even at the World Bank and the IMF. There are two types of argumentfor this, theoretical arguments and empirical ones. The argument in favour of financialliberalization was based on the theory of the efficiency of the financial markets and on theassumption that information was totally accurate. However, when information is not perfectlyreliable and markets are incomplete, unbridled competition is no longer pareto-efficient andgovernment intervention must be maintained in order to control certain sources of inefficiencyor fragility (Stiglitz, 1998, 1999): adverse selections and inordinate risk-taking in the presenceof asymmetrical information, accentuated by the conviction of a lender of last resortintervention, which raises the problem of moral risk; uncertainty over the efficiency of themodes of governance of the banks coupled with short-sightedness imposed by the8shareholders; the risk of a herd mentality causing the irrational spread of speculative crisesand banking crises and so on. At the same time, experience shows that the liberalization ofinternational capital movements significantly increases the risk of a financial crisis althoughthere is no proven correlation with the level of investment or the rate of growth (Rodrik,1998).This overall situation justifies the fact that the architecture of the global financial system is indeed today a relevant issue