The global financial safety net has expanded from barely more than one institution — the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — to a much larger web comprising the IMF, regional financing arrangements (RFAs) and central bank swap lines. This raises several questions:  How does the global financial safety net work today? Is it adequate and reliable? How will this multipolar system work in a crisis? What is the role of regional institutions and central banks going forward? 

Beatrice Weder di Mauro is Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute, President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), the leading European network of economists, and Distinguished Fellow at the Emerging Markets Institute of INSEAD. From 2001 to 2018 she held the Chair for International Macroeconomics at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts from 2004 to 2012. Previously, she worked at the University of Basel, the IMF and has held visiting positions at Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research and the United Nations University in Tokyo. She is presently Independent Director on the boards of Bombardier, UBS and Bosch; Senior Research Fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER) in Singapore; and member of the ETH Foundation Council in Zurich and the Bellagio Group.