Stephany Griffith-Jones

Stephany Griffith-Jones
Born (1947-06-05) June 5, 1947
Institution Initiative for Policy Dialogue
Overseas Development Institute
Field Financial economics
Development economics
School or
tradition		 New Keynesian economics
Alma mater University of Chile (B.A. 1971)
Cambridge University (Ph.D. 1981)
Influences John Maynard Keynes
Hyman Minsky
James Tobin
Charles P. Kindleberger
John Kenneth Galbraith
Joseph Stiglitz
Awards Distinguished Czech Woman of the World Award (2006)
ALIDE prize for best essay on Latin America's international finance (1983)

Stephany Griffith-Jones (born June 5, 1947) is an economist specialising in international finance and development, with emphasis on reform of the international financial system, specifically in relation to financial regulation, global governance and international capital flows. She is currently Financial Markets Director at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue,[1] based at Columbia University in New York and Associate Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute. Previously she was Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. She has held the position of Deputy Director of International Finance at the Commonwealth Secretariat and has worked at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and in the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. She started her career in 1970 at the Central Bank of Chile. Before joining the Institute of Development Studies, she worked at Barclays Bank International in the UK. She has acted as senior consultant to governments in Eastern Europe and Latin America and to many international agencies, including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Commission, UNICEF, UNDP and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. She was also a member of the Warwick Commission on international financial reform.[2] She has published over 20 books and written many scholarly and journalistic articles. Her latest book, edited jointly with José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph Stiglitz, Time for the Visible Hand, Lessons from the 2008 crisis, was published in 2010.

Contributions to economic analysis and policy

Griffith-Jones has contributed to research and policy suggestions on how to make the domestic and international financial system more stable so it can better serve the needs of inclusive economic development and the real economy. One of her first articles, The Growth of Multinational Banking, the Euro-currency market and their effects on developing countries[3] in the Journal of Development Studies, published in 1980, warned of the risk of excessive international bank lending to developing economies.

Her 1986 book with Osvaldo Sunkel, Debt and Development Crises in Latin America: The End of An Illusion, showed the negative effects of the 1980s Latin American debt crisis on the region's economic development.[4] She was an early advocate of debt relief in Latin America and Sub-saharan Africa.

Writing with Ricardo Ffrench-Davis in the 1990s she contributed to the debate on how Latin America could curb and manage volatile capital flows.[5] She again warned of the risks of costly financial crises if sufficient measures such as capital controls were not implemented.

After several financial crises, mainly in developing countries, she started in the mid-1990s to advocate capital flow regulations in capital source countries as a way to curb excessive and volatile capital flows.[6] She believed this would reduce the risk of major reversals of capital flows and the financial crises that result from them. This is further discussed in her 1998 book Global Capital Flows, should they be regulated?[7]

In the discussion on reform of the international financial architecture she contributed to the analysis of crisis prevention, especially through financial regulation and more effective financial crisis management. For example, she advocated special drawing rights issues by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a means to provide official liquidity when private capital flows fall sharply. She also advocated expanded and less conditional IMF lending so countries do not have to unnecessarily adjust their economies, especially in the face of financial crises or other external shocks.

Writing with José Antonio Ocampo since the late 1990s[8] they expanded the concept of counter-cyclical reform of the international financial system to help stabilise capital flows and domestic private lending. The aim was to avoid frequent costly crises, facilitate macro-economic management and to achieve stable and inclusive economic growth in developing countries.

She has worked on practical policy applications of these ideas. She has advocated reform of compensatory financing at the IMF in the face of external shocks to make it larger, speedier and with less conditionality. Similarly she was an early supporter of expanding development banks - nationally, regionally and multilaterally - and their role in counter-cyclical lending. She has also advocated the issue of GDP-linked bonds as a counter-cyclical mechanism to reduce the risk of financial crises.[9] She has long supported the idea of counter-cyclical regulation. These and other practical measures are aimed at reforming the financial system so that it supports stable inclusive economic growth without costly financial crises.

Publications

Selected books
Selected book chapters
Selected articles in journals
Selected articles in popular press
Video and online sources

See also

References

  1. ↑ Initiative for Policy Dialogue website
  2. ↑ Warwick Commission bio
  3. ↑ The growth of multinational banking, the Euro-currency market and their effects on developing countries, Journal of Development Studies, Volume 16, Issue 2, 1980
  4. ↑ Debt and Development Crises in Latin America: The End of An Illusion, with Osvaldo Sunkel, Oxford University Press, 1986
  5. ↑ Coping With Capital Surges: The Return of Finance to Latin America, edited with Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, Lynne Rienner, 1995
  6. ↑ How Can Future Currency Crises Be Prevented or Better Managed?, in Teunissen, Jan Joost, Can Currency Crises Be Prevented or Better Managed? Lessons from Mexico, FONDAD, 1996
  7. ↑ Global Capital Flows, should they be regulated? with preface by Nobel prize winner James Tobin, Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, 1998
  8. ↑ What Progress on International Financial Reform? Why so Limited? - written with José Antonio Ocampo and Jacques Cailloux, EGDI, 1999
  9. ↑ "A bond that insures against instability", with Robert J. Shiller, The Financial Times, July 10, 2006
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