TY - UNPD A1 - Hillebrand, Rainer T1 - IMF and World Bank: Institutional Set-up, Criticisms and Challenges N2 - The two Bretton Woods Sisters – International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank – have been key actors in the international political economy since their inception in 1944. While the IMF was established to support national economies during rather short-term, macroeconomic crises, the World Bank has had a more long-term focus on development and economic growth. In pursuit of their goals, both institutions’ instrumental repertoire includes the provision of information, surveillance, technical assistance and training, policy advice, and – arguably most importantly – lending to those countries that have limited or no access to private capital markets. In this paper, I critically analyse the Bretton Woods sisters’ institutional set-up, their objectives and instruments. Further, various criticisms and challenges of the multilateral system are discussed, including the economic policy conditions imposed on borrowing countries, the Western-dominated governance structure and the under-representation of major emerging economies such as China and India. T3 - Discussion Papers in Business and Economics - 21 KW - IMF KW - World Bank KW - Bretton Woods KW - global financial architecture KW - multilateralism Y1 - 2017 UR - https://fuldok.hs-fulda.de/opus4/frontdoor/index/index/docId/703 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:66-opus4-7031 ER -