"Co-operation on the MAP within the G20 has not advanced and may have gone backwards. The 2010 IMF reforms have not yet been implemented and further progress on quota reform and governance are stalled."

“In certain superficial respects, the problem of global imbalances is moving toward resolution. The Chinese renminbi has appreciated so much that the IMF declared it only ‘moderately undervalued’ in its 2012 assessment of the Chinese economy, and the Chinese current account surplus shrank to about 2.5% of GDP last year, from a peak of over 10%. But this improvement is largely the result of factors that are either cyclical or unsustainable, in particular the weakness of the global recovery (which dampens demand for Chinese exports), and China’s binge of investment spending. Sustained rebalancing is far from achieved. The need for surplus countries to stimulate domestic demand—and help boost growth in neighboring countries—is especially urgent in the euro zone. Germany’s progress in rebalancing has been far slower than China’s; its current account surplus was well over 6% of GDP in 2012.

Meanwhile, although talk of ‘currency wars’ has receded in recent months, the potential for an eruption of beggar-thy-neighbor foreign exchange policies has by no means been eliminated. The world still lacks any viable, enforceable system of preventing countries from cheapening their currencies. Almost exactly a year ago, the IMF board approved the ‘Integrated Surveillance Decision,’ which authorizes the Fund to discuss with member countries how their policies may affect the international monetary system. That was a positive step, but it lacks any enforcement power. As for G-20, the Mutual Assessment Process continues to show no likelihood of having any significant impact on the policies of major economies.”

"We have to be realistic. When leaders and ministers meet in the G20 context, they spell out mutually acceptable goals and define a strategy to meet them. When they return home, they have to focus instead on national interests and objectives. Short-term challenges dominate in the domestic arena, while global progress requires a longer-term focus. The reports that the IMF staff prepare for the G20 are typically anodyne and tend to soft-pedal the description of necessary reforms, but they do focus on the right issues to motivate G20 discussions: collective actions to strengthen global growth, avoid the risk of a renewed financial crisis, reduce payments imbalances, and stabilize financial systems through appropriate regulations. But expecting the resulting discussions to lead to dramatic improvements in policy implementation requires a very sunny disposition.

Similarly, the agenda for reforming IMF governance is well specified and has been agreed by G20 leaders. The IMF Executive Board is making progress toward deciding how to complete the process. Implementation, however, depends crucially on legislative action by the U.S. Congress, which has no realistic chance of approval in the coming months."

“On the positive side, we should consider the counter factual things could have been a lot worse. Relative to 2010, the spectre of currency wars has receded; there is little prospect of a rash of competitive devaluations. As recently as May 2013, Fred Bergsten worried that currency tensions, and the policies fueling them threatened to create the kind of global problems that contributed to the Great Depression, saying ‘Much more seems quite possible in the near future,’ and ‘The economic damage that has already resulted is immense and could become much worse’. But relative stability has prevailed.

On the negative side, while we haven’t suffered from competitive devaluations, the inadequate appreciation of artificially undervalued currencies is discouraging. The approach to sovereign debt restructuring is truly disappointing. As one blogster framed it, ‘When you lend someone an amount of money that they have no ability to repay, then lend them more money to pay interest and keep repeating this process indefinitely, what outcome should one logically expect?’ The reluctance to insist on haircuts, especially for large institutions, is disappointing.”

“Very little progress on improving crisis resolution framework. Debt restructuring discussion has been stillborn since 2003 failure of the SDRM. Still a great deal of effort needed to make the international non-system more coordinated and unified. Continued volatility is likely.”

“Surveillance has, if anything, retreated. The IMF has done good work on revising its lending facilities, particularly the transformation of the CCL into the FCL, but no new countries that would immediately benefit, such as Spain, have been convinced to accept it. The attempt to consider debt management in the G20 has been abortive. Coordination of fiscal targets has not advanced. Discord remains on financing the European crisis. The IMF is still too small.”

“The rebalancing that has taken place is the result of the growth slowdown in the industrial world, and does not reflect any success of surveillance. The discussions of debt-restructuring (especially in the Eurozone) are not making progress.”

"The situation in Europe is the dominant factor ; don’t see signs of progress. There is slippage in efforts to strengthen the governance structure. The effort on the MAP is neutral, not the progress we’d like, but no regression – officials keep grinding away.

US Treasury officials have become uncomfortable with the Toronto G20 agreement on the fiscal track. There has been regression if the starting point was three years ago- but little movement either way in the last year.”

“Ratification of the IMF ‘Seoul’ reform package is still overdue, despite the previously agreed-upon deadline of October 2013. Macroeconomic cooperation under the G20 process has not moved beyond an exchange of information on each other’s economic policies.”

“There remains deep divisions in the Troika that plays itself out in Europe. The IMF is at odds with countries like Germany in its debt sustainability assessment of countries like Greece. The Eurozone crisis looks less like a temporary one off and a long term structural problem that will challenge the region for the next decade as global economic power shift elsewhere.”

“I think that important inroads have been made to develop a holistic/systemic approach to surveillance in the last year. This is well attested in the findings of the new IMF surveillance reports (i.e. spillover reports, pilot external reports and ad hoc assessment of policy spillovers for specific area of activity, such as for the measures for managing capital flows). The MAP is a further step in the useful direction of ‘connecting the dot’s across markets, sectors and countries. Furthermore, increased inter-institutional cooperation (in particular among the IMF-FSB-BIS) has also improved the quality of the analyses that policy-makers may rely on to understand the global economy and the interconnectedness among its various parts.

In spite of these important developments, my overall judgment does not cross the threshold of ‘minimal progress’ because current achievements have been offset by weaknesses in other areas. For instance, in spite of the important progress in developing systemic surveillance analyses, the new surveillance does not appear to be based on more solid ground than its predecessor. In particular, no mechanism has been develop to redress the biggest weakness in international surveillance – namely, its inability to have traction over systematically important countries. In short, although we may now be more optimistic about the quality of surveillance analyses (and, in particular, about the required focus on spillovers and interconnections), I doubt that these improved analyses will ever be able to heed remedial political action at the domestic level should the need to act arises. This is especially the case if the surveillance findings (and the attendant policy recommendations) will clash with domestic economic choices and interests.

Finally, my over judgement is negatively influenced by the continuing inability to fill in one of the most serious gap in the international financial architecture, namely the development of a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism.”

“The Euro crisis drags on—more than three years after its inception. Member countries along with the IMF did a much better job in addressing the Asian crisis, and the rapid return to growth was the reward. The central problem was the EU’s unwillingness to take care of the sources of the problems quickly and the IMF’s reluctance to push the EU harder to do so. In the past year, the IMF has taken tentative steps toward insisting that the Europeans take a more realistic approach at least in Greece, but still continues to be tolerant of an unfunded program that leaves very significant and potentially destabilizing uncertainty in markets. True progress, that will make the IMF and the framework for global cooperation, requires a framework that bolsters the IMF’s ability to withstand inappropriate political pressure from its largest members and better procedures for resolving severe sovereign debt crises.

The effectiveness of IMF surveillance relies on continuing efforts to improve the IMF’s ability to flag selectively the most risky circumstances and policies. That said, this process is an art, not a science. Crises will happen no matter how good IMF is at anticipating crises and it is in determining how to secure IMF involvement early and effectively that the focus should lie.”

“Central banks are busy trying to deal with their own domestic concerns. Politically, domestic concerns are also at the forefront.”

“Not my area of expertise. If pushed, my sense would be about 50%.”

“The focus in the past year has been on Europe where it appears that policy responses to the financial crises have been, for the most part, ad hoc and specific to each country’s situation at the time. While the crises were contained, and prevented from becoming a global crisis, there has not been much progress in establishing global financial safety nets. IMF reform has not kept pace with changes in the global economy, and will not for the foreseeable future, undermining its credibility vis-à-vis developing countries. However, in the last year, it has performed well in its new role as a lender to European countries. The EU, however, is under increasing strain – not only as a monetary system but support is dwindling in certain key Member States, notably the UK, for the customs union in general.”

“Financial integration within the Eurozone has regressed and the deleveraging of European banks has far to go. As noted by the IMF, the risk of avoiding new episodes of financial instability has not markedly decreased since the 2008 crisis.”

“Major countries including the United States have been moving toward imposing stricter capital requirements on their largest, systemically-important financial institutions than are required under Basel III and FSB guidelines. Moreover, global regulators have acknowledged mounting concern about the excessive complexity of Basel III and the ability of banks to game the rules. Those two developments are both encouraging. But the stricter capital requirements aren’t nearly sufficient to ensure against the collapse of some large financial institutions in the event of another serious crisis. And as for willingness to shore up Basel 3 in a meaningful way, action has yet to be taken.”

“Progress on ‘too big to fail’ has been disappointing. Given the necessity for legislative action to change regulations, and the timetable that entails, the Basel III arrangements have far too leisurely a phase-in schedule.”

“Lots of discussion but little action. Many deadlines are still several years in the future. Insufficient urgency for action.”

“Basel III and FSB work are important first steps and should be recognized as such. Banks are already making moves to raise capital. Surveillance frameworks are improving. But the FSB and G20 work on these issues needs to be brought to intermediate conclusions and deadlines for action agreed.”

“There have been very substantial discussions, but the implementation of Basel III is still very uncertain, and financial reform is occurring in quite inconsistent ways in different countries.”

“While the issues are technically difficult, a lot of good work has been done and significant progress has been made. Implementation is a challenge – it will take time given that in many cases legislation is required. An example of a significant breakthrough is the agreement of a single entry point with respect to ‘bail-ins’ of significantly important institutions. The effort to harmonize minimum (not identical) standards is encouraging.

Shadow banking (which means something different in China than in other G20 countries, is a difficult issue but at least it is under the microscope with work being done. At St. Petersburg the FSB will present recommendations”

“International momentum behind the international financial regulatory agenda has been fading and, as a result, no meaningful progress has been achieved.”

“Out of the limelight of financial crises, it seems as though the international regulatory regime has hit a standstill. Little has been implemented and yet numerous proposals or reforms are in backlog or continue to be promoted.”

“International efforts in this area are particularly disappointing from my perspective because international cooperation on financial regulatory issues has been hailed as one of the building blocs of the crisis management response since the early 2008 at least. In other words, international meetings/communiqué/actions in this area have raised high expectations of significant change. As we know, however, the higher the expectation, the biggest the disappointment. This is exactly what I think has happened over the past year. As the centre stage of the crisis continued moving from the financial sector to the real economy, financial regulation has somewhat lost its urgency with the result that the international reform agenda has been slowed down, most notably in the area of the OTC regulation as suggested in this survey. But serious risk for international financial cooperation also stems from an increased fragmentation of approaches between the US and the EU. A rift in two key financial jurisdictions does not bode well for the international efforts at regulating financial markets and products...

Cross-countries regulatory variation is also an issue that is worth looking at more closely in the coming months. That is to say, if up to now much attention has been devoted to issues related to rule-creation, in the next months, the main problems will be those related to the implementation of international decisions. Domestic political-economy specificities (regulatory structures and cultures to name just a few) may well interfere with the implementation of international commitments and thus contribute to international regulatory fragmentation.”

“There is a strong push against reforms by financial institutions. The job shift by Mark Carney may also have slowed down progress.”

“There is little forward progress on the Seoul Action plan and reports from the G20 suggest there is little consensus on how to proceed. No substantial progress has been registered on financing for sustainable development. World Bank governance reform has not advanced.”

“No field suffers more international meetings resulting in elegant platitudes and irreproachable aspirational statements. To date the G20 efforts in the development effort have had no impact on the ground. The debate to succeed the millennium development goals with a set of post 2015 Goals, complicated by an independent process to produce global Sustainability Goals, appears to be on a track to result in a deadlock between advocates of retaining the focus on poverty and the poorest, and supporters of broadening the goals to embrace democracy, human rights, diminishing violence and increasing resilience, among other candidate goals. The 0.7% ODA/ GDP target seems forever implausible.”

"The G8 has not reached its own targets and no effort has been undertaken to correct this. Instead, the goal posts are being shifted."

“ODA targets from Monterrey and Gleneagles remain unfulfilled. MDGs have provided an excellent framework for strategic action and time-bound targeting, but major multilateral and national development institutions have not sufficiently integrated them into their operations and strategic planning. Major G8 initiatives such as the Muskoka agreements on child and maternal health are still pending. There needs to be a better system of monitoring and accountability on past commitments. Innovative financing sources discussion is a distraction from the need to follow through on existing goals. Similarly, the post-2015 agenda is regressive: there is no need to take the focus off achieving the MDGs. We should have simply extended the deadline.”

“The successes are largely due to still strong growth in major emerging markets.”

“Besides declaratory statements, there is increasing need for bolder action.”

"Descriptive Assessment: Sadly, little has been achieved in this area. Moreover, World Bank President Kim boldly announces that poverty will be eliminated in 2030- a highly unrealistic target and one that the Bank is now promoting with little attention to global realities and past failures of the MDGs."

“I am not sufficiently well informed to provide an assessment. My quantitative response is based on my general understanding of the issues”

“I do not see much tangible sign of progress. Words do not lead to much progress on the ground. Indeed we see a world that is in many ways going backwards – growing gaps between the super rich and the middle. I write this as a non-economist, but as someone concerned about political stability. We all know that globalization needs to work for more people, but I sense popular perceptions are generally contrary.”

“No real progress on multilateral trade liberalization has been achieved. The launch and continuation of bilateral and plurilateral trade negotiations, however, threatens the fabric of the multilateral system.”

“The enthusiasm that policymakers in the United States, Europe and Asia have been showing in recent months for giant regional trade agreements (trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic) is taken as encouraging by many commentators, who focus on the alleged growth-stimulating potential of these deals on a sluggish global economy. I strongly dissent from this view. In the first place, the estimates of the growth impact are grossly inflated; the accords are unlikely to be nearly as ambitious as many claim, and even if the deals do prove ambitious the stimulative effects won’t materialize for many years, perhaps decades.

But more importantly, these agreements threaten to drain the life blood from the WTO, by seriously diminishing its centrality in the trading system. The attention and energy that is going into devising new trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic rules is all based on the argument that multilateral negotiations have gone nowhere—and although it may be true that the Doha Round is a monumental failure, that means the world’s major trading partners should be doing everything they can to shore up the multilateral system rather than undermining it further with regional arrangements. As the WTO’s centrality continues to erode, the dispute settlement system—the one magnificently-functioning piece of global governance—will be increasingly at risk because countries that lose decisions will understandably resent and resist obeying the dictates of an organization with such outdated rules. The emergence of new, ‘21st century’ trans-Pacific and/or trans-Atlantic rules will only exacerbate this tendency. Their benefits of these deals (which I suspect will prove illusory anyway) are not worth the potentially disastrous costs to the multilateral system.”

“The bicycle theory of trade policy negotiations is that continued forward movement is necessary- otherwise you will have a painful misadventure. From this point of view, we are in trouble. Even Pascal Lamy, outgoing director-general of the World Trade Organization, characterizes the Doha Round as deadlocked (although it is hard to see the distinction between irrevocably deadlocked and dead). There are worrying signs that plurilateral negotiations will result in a future patchwork of disparate sets of rules.”

“Too much focus on regional and bilateral agreements. Not enough on WTO process.”

“WTO process is being actively undermined by regional and bilateral negotiations.”

“The major progress is occurring on a regional rather than a global basis.”

“Multilateral negotiations (Doha round) are at a standstill although the EU and the USA have just launched their negotiations for a bilateral trade and investment agreement.”

“Progress over the last year 30%.

The Doha Round is essentially and the challenges facing the new WTO DG are truly daunting. He takes office with a reputation for being the "insider" or the "Geneva" candidate. Will he be up to the internal changes needed in the Secretariat and can he work out a transition from the Doha fiasco to the next round of trade negotiations. Or will there be a next round at the multilateral level. He faces his first Ministerial in December, barely three months after taking office and it is a real challenge to even have his core team in place by then.

Things are happening at the regional level, with the participation of Japan on the TPP and the LDP landslide victory in the Upper House Elections in Japan. Will Abenomics extend to a removal of at least some of the protection extended to Japanese agriculture? Will the combination of the TPP and the Canada/EU negotiations lead to similar improvements in the idiotic Canadian supply management system?

And we now have the beginnings of the US/EU talks. Is there a glimmer of hope that all of these regionals could remove at least a few blocks from the wall of agricultural protection? And if all three negotiations were to be successful, what will be the implications for the WTO?”

“Not sufficiently well informed to provide an assessment. Response based on general understanding of the issues.”

“Much more talk but not much action. My feeling is that the array of trade negotiations under way is likely to undermine the global trade architecture.”

“Global economic governance in the trade area is at a low ebb. The WTO has lost its primacy as a multilateral institution, its heyday has past, and it is not certain whether it will be able to regain its former authority and stature. Structurally, it is now impossible to negotiate multilateral agreements in the WTO – membership is too universal and interests are too diverse, the organization is simply too big, it has become a victim of its own success. The only way for the organization to continue is to allow for plurilateral agreements, for the establishment of a management or executive body, and for a committee structure representing different groups of members to be established. However, the membership cannot agree to even agenda of meetings much less important institutional changes or the need for institutional reforms.

Many WTO members, including the emerging economies, are actively negotiating preferential trade agreements (bilaterally or plurilaterally) and international investment agreements with partners in their regions as well as abroad. This phenomenon is widespread. What is new is that major economies are now negotiating ‘new age’ trade, investment and economic agreements with each other and some plurilateral agreements across several continents are starting to emerge (such as the TransPacificPartnership – TPP, which is intended to be a precursor to a wide customs union of the Pacific). Some observers predict that if the EU – US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations are successful, Canada and Mexico may join in that agreement as well as other countries. Still others speculate that if the WTO continues its decline, perhaps eventually there will be an impetus among some countries to put a web of PTAs together into a new, different configuration.

This is pure speculation but it demonstrates what dire straits the WTO is in at present and how it is being challenged by the proliferation of PTAs and the inability to take decisions within its own internal structure.

Whether all of these PTA negotiations will be successful, in particular, the TPP and TTIP, remains to be seen. Even if the negotiations are concluded, these agreements would need to be implemented and approved under the respective constitutions of the partner countries. In the case, of the TPP, for example, approval would be required by the US Congress and the Japanese Diet. In the case of the TTIP, constitutional approval is required by the US Congress and in the EU under the Lisbon Treaty by the Member States as well as the European Commission and the European Parliament.

What is clear is that incoherence and inconsistency is increasing in the trade and investment fields with the proliferation of trade and investment agreements. There are presently around 350 PTAs notified to the WTO, 3,200 international investment agreements, and many more of both types of agreements under negotiation. The policy focus, especially of key players such as the European Union, the United States and Canada, formerly committed multilateralists, has changed dramatically in the past few years. They are now pursuing unilateral and bilateral trade and investment agendas, which have greatly increased the complexity and incoherence of international economic governance while at the same time the incidence of global trade and investment disputes has increased significantly.”

“There has been no real progress reached on these issues over the course of the last year.”

“It is time to call the mortician and arrange for a dignified funeral for the UNFCCC. It is fruitless to continue wasteful annual Conferences of the Parties, with thousands of people convening to pretend that they are making progress, when there is no chance whatsoever of global agreement on either legally binding emissions reductions or on the provision of “new and additional” resources for climate change mitigation and adaptation to be transferred from developed countries to developing countries. New frontiers are being created in euphemisms to continue the cruel pretence of the Copenhagen ‘pledge’ of $100 billion per year of new financial resources. The internationally agreed target of 2 degrees temperature increase is in the rear window and carbon emissions continue their inexorable increase.”

“An ongoing disaster. The framework for discussion needs to be fundamentally changed.”

“The UNFCCC is dead. Climate change negotiations should be moved to the G20.”

“An effective response to climate change has been a casualty of the financial crisis.”

“The whole UNFCCC process is flawed — an unending series of communiques rescheduling deadlines and promises that are not kept. Promises are cheap in a process without accountability. There are no national incentives to follow through and implement commitments. It is time to try a new process within a much smaller group — perhaps the trio of the EU, China and the US — or the G20.”

“Progress over the last year 20%

Over the past year, the science of climate change has become even harder and the pessimism shown by even traditionally conservative institutions like the IMF, World Bank and the IEA has reached a crescendo.

The scenarios predicted by the IEA are now showing possible temperature increases of up to 5C, in contrast with the 2C maximum agreed to by leaders in Copenhagen. These increases would be catastrophic to life on earth. The IEA has developed outline strategies for the period leading up to 2030, perhaps the critical period. But despite encouraging signs in the development and implementation of low carbon technologies, we are from the IEA targets.

Both Christine Lagarde and President Kim of the Bank took advantage of the Davos pulpit to emphasize the importance of acting on climate change with the Managing Director of the IMF declaring it to be the biggest economic challenge facing the world today. The IMF followed up her remarks with a hard-hitting study of subsidies to the energy industry. These were estimated to be in the order of $1.3 trillion per year.

The IMF study reinforced the G-20 thrust on fossil fuel subsidies, which seems to have had little impact on policies over the past year. After a good start in Pittsburgh, governments have predictably lost interest in doing battle with entrenched special interests.

There has been a little progress to report on carbon pricing. Australia has introduced a cap and trade system, although it may not survive the coming election. More significantly, China has launched a series of pilot emissions pricing and trading schemes, with a view toward a national system if they are successful.

Finally, there is the question of climate finance. The developed countries claim to have met the $30 billion target they set in Copenhagen, but this has been disputed by many NGOs and developing countries. And the new Green Climate Fund has set up shop in Korea. But the funding gap is enormous and international leadership from both governments and the private sector is urgently needed for funding for both mitigation and adaptation.”

“To the extent there is any reason to be hopeful it is because China and the US are pursuing their bilateral relationship. They can lead the world and they may, in fact, do so. Environmental issues are of increasing political importance in China. Technologies are also emerging in areas that had not been foreseen. The multilateral process is badly broken.”

“My comments are restricted to climate change. No progress has been made as yet on the multilateral front. What is more worrying is that because the prospect of a multilateral agreement is remote, many countries are taking unilateral measures to combat climate change but some of these measures may have perverse effects on trade with developing and developed countries also producing renewable fuels.

In some cases, the policy responses by governments are not well-thought out – some renewable fuel subsidies have serious environmental and food security consequences as well as trade effects. These measures are being increasingly challenged in the WTO, which is not well-adapted to the climate change/renewable energy policy conundrum. The PTA negotiations, while dealing with a wide range of behind-the-border regulatory issues, also do not specifically address these issues although some do have chapters on the environment. The WTO Doha Round also does not cover climate change or renewable energy per se, although subsidies and market access are issues which could potentially incorporate discussions related to renewable energy and environmental measures.

The one silver lining on the horizon is the fact that the US and China (Presidents Obama and Xi) have signalled that they are moving ahead bilaterally on climate change. This is a very important new development. With leadership from these two powers, things could change in the multilateral UNFCCC negotiations next year. There is still hope for multilateral negotiations.”