IMF Governance, Management of Developing Country Financial Crises, and Health Impacts

As financial globalisation has proceeded since 1980, economic performance and living conditions in the developing world have been shaped more and more by international financial markets and official financing flows. These in turn are a product of the global financial system, which is largely shaped by decisions taken in the IMF. At the national level, economic and social policies are both influenced and constrained by these international economic forces; and in many developing countries they have been driven more explicitly, in some cases for more than a generation, by detailed policy conditions attached directly or indirectly (through cross-conditionality) to IMF loans on which they have been made critically dependent by the operation of the international financial system.