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The paper discusses the pros and cons of capital account liberalization. Rather than contrasting liberalization and regulation of capital flows as irreconcilable antagonisms, we argue that capital account liberalization requires institutional and regulatory safeguards. Even though the effectiveness of specific capital controls cannot be taken for granted, we reject the view that financial globalization has deprived national policymakers of the means to protect their economies against crisis. In addition to national safeguards, we assess the chances for crisis prevention and resolution on the regional level and present options to overcome institutional deficits on the global level. We conclude that reforms of the international financial architecture can help prevent illiquidity and ensure a fair burden sharing in the case of insolvency, without aggravating moral hazard behavior of the parties involved.

Die Forderungen von Globalisierungskritikern nach einem radikalen Umbau der internationalen Finanzmarktordnung sind von den wirtschaftspolitischen Entscheidungsträgern aus guten Gründen abgelehnt worden. Vorzuwerfen ist den Entscheidungsträgern allerdings, dass auch ökonomisch sinnvolle Anpassungen des ordnungspolitischen Rahmens an die gestiegene internationale Kapitalmobilität wegen inner- und zwischenstaatlicher Dissonanzen nicht recht vorangekommen sind. Im Vordergrund dieses Beitrags stehen die Positionen deutscher Instanzen in der andauernden Reformdebatte. Im internationalen Kontext scheint vor allem die Bundesbank in wichtigen Fragen auf verlorenem Posten zu kämpfen. It is for good reasons that economic policymakers have rejected demands by globalization sceptics to fundamentally restructure the international financial architecture. However, policymakers are rightly criticized for having made only limited progress in adjusting the regulatory and institutional framework to increased international capital mobility. This failure is largely due to conflicting interests within and between major countries. This paper focuses on the positions of German authorities in the ongoing reform debate. In the international context, especially the Bundesbank seems to fight a losing battle with regard to several issues at stake.

The paper analyzes how the next financial crisis can be prevented and which role the IMF should play. The paper distinguishes between the improvement of existing instruments and solving the moral hazard problem. Both issues are interrelated. The size of operation of the IMF creates a moral hazard problem. The IMF should credibly announce the ex-post rules for bridging a liquidity gap in order to set the right ex-ante incentives for the behavior of debtors and creditors. An institutional design for dealing with private and sovereign debt analogous to national bankruptcy rules has to be developed.

After World War II, all industrial countries have reached a level of prosperity unprecedented in history; many developing countries and several socialist countries have experienced notable economic growth too. The post-war multilateral trading and monetary systems have been singled out by politicians, businessmen and academic economists as main institutional pillars for these achievements; they permitted positive net effects on resource allocation, economies of scale, international capital movements and the transfer of technology.