No discussion of institutional arrangements in the global economic and financial system will be complete without a discussion of the IMF, the international financial institution central to resolving balance of payments crises. If the IMF did not exist we would probably need to create something like it.
In a world of global finance, it is useful to have a multilateral organization that has some responsibility for providing liquidity assistance to countries when they do not have access to capital markets and also encouraging countries to undertake prudent fiscal and monetary policies. The IMF has come under some criticism for elements of its policy prescriptions.