IMF Survey: A Look Back

• Pages: 194-195

Page 194

How did the IMF Survey, which started as a print vehicle for explaining the IMF's work to the public, end up as an exclusively online source of IMF news and analysis for a large global audience?

The editors of the magazine offer a brief history of the publication.

In August 1972, the IMF Survey succeeded the International Financial News Survey, which had been a compilation of global economic and financial news items from various sources.

The new publication had a different mandate. It was "aimed at promoting a wider understanding of international monetary problems and the work of the Fund," according to an internal memorandum in June 1971 proposing the IMF Survey's launch.

The Survey, written and edited by IMF staff, would offer a "current and comprehensive review of major economic and financial news developments, a substantial account of Fund activity, and a section on individual national economies." The publication would serve as a vehicle for disseminating information gathered by staff economists in the course of their work on member countries' economies, according to the proposal.

Then, even more than now, the IMF's work was viewed as esoteric, and few outside the institution understood what the Fund actually did. The IMF needed to make a more systematic effort to explain its work to the public-even the most sophisticated, well-informed members of the public, an early advocate of the IMF Survey argued in an internal memorandum. Its audience expanded further after French and Spanish editions started up in January 1974.

The IMF Survey began publication at a time when the global economy was undergoing a dramatic transformation. The international monetary system designed at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference had collapsed with the announcement by the United States in 1971 that the link between the dollar's value and that of gold was to be severed permanently. As a result, par values and dollar convertibility were replaced by a system of floating exchange rates for the major currencies.

The IMF's role in the new monetary system was likewise being redefined. The Committee of 20 on the Reform of the International Monetary System worked between 1972 and 1974 to map out a program for reform-just as the G-20 today is charged with devising changes to the global financial system. One has only to glance at IMF Survey headlines from that era-on skyrocketing oil prices, rising inflation, and the world's increasing economic and financial...