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Lagged Learning and the Response to Equilibrium Shock: The Global Financial Crisis and IMF Surveillance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2011

Manuela Moschella
Manuela Moschella*
Affiliation:
Sociology, University of Trento
*
Manuela Moschella Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy, Via Verdi 26, 38100 Trento, Tel:+39 0461 881386; Fax: +39 0461 881348, e-mail: Manuela.Moschella@sis.unitn.it
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Abstract

The paper investigates the changes to the Fund's bilateral surveillance policy in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–09 asking about the factors that caused the quick and deep shift to a systemic surveillance approach. In answering this question, the paper argues that the causes of the quick and deep transformation of IMF surveillance lie in the preceding two decades of incremental accumulation of knowledge and small transformations in policy instruments and organizational practices. In identifying the causes of present policy choices in the lessons drawn from past experience, the paper provides an example of lagged learning because the lessons drawn from the 1990s emerging market crises exerted their full impact only as a response to the global financial crisis. These findings therefore contribute to the literature that aims at showing the importance of temporality and process sequencing to explain policy change.

Keywords

IMFsurveillancecrisislearningsequencing
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 121 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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