We compile the list of articles published in major refereed economics
journals during the last 35 years that have received more than 500
citations.  We document major shifts in the mode of contribution and in
the importance of different sub-fields: Theory loses out to empirical
work, and micro and macro give way to growth and development in the
1990s.  While we do not witness any decline in the primacy of production
in the United States over the period, the concentration of institutions
within the U.S. hosting and training authors of the highly-cited
articles has declined substantially.

That is from Kim, Morse, and Zingales; here is the paper.

Kremer
and Watt argue that as more immigrant women serve in household
positions, more high-skilled native women are therefore available to
join the labor market, driving down relative wages among high-skilled
workers and reducing the disparity in wages between low- and
high-skilled workers.

Here is the paper, and that is via Greg Mankiw.  I’ll say it again: it is not frequently enough recognized that the gender of immigrants is a major policy issue.  Female immigrants bring fewer problems than do male immigrants, and they encourage the male immigrants to behave better, but of course they also, in the longer run, mean a greater demographic shift in favor of the immigrants and their culture.

Here is Ken Rogoff on the IMF, via Asymmetrical Information.

Many critics argue that Bretton Woods has gone away and the world has no current financial crises.  What is the IMF to do?  Plus the IMF’s management of crises can be counterproductive and create moral hazard.

The primary question is what kind of recurring but temporarily patched together multilateral crisis management arrangements would replace the IMF.  The IMF would seem to be an especially good deal for the United States.  Despite being the world’s largest debtor nation, in the absence of an IMF, we would be looked upon as a global lender of last resort. 

The presence of an IMF allows us to trade with other nations, and sometimes bully them around.  But when their financial claims come we can calmly tell them to go take a place in line; furthermore other countries will help pick up the tab or help make "conditionality" look less imperialistic.  Given that the US has a role as global policeman in any case, the IMF shifts the "terms of trade" of that role in our favor.  Do note that many IMF critics would prefer to revise this entire arrangement, but simply abolishing the IMF, taken alone, would not bring large gains even under a libertarian view of the world.

A question: given that much of the funds are raised on
private capital markets, how much does the IMF cost (in the crude sense
of the gross subsidy) each year?

By the way, I’ll go out on a limb and predict the next financial crisis will come in an Eastern European nation which wanted to join the Eurozone but couldn’t quite make it.  Once this failure is realized capital will flow out rapidly.

On the IMF, here is commentary from The Economist.

Addendum: Here is an IMF piece on Robert Mundell, via Greg Mankiw.

The highly-intelligent-but-requiring-a-good-dose-of-Don-Boudreaux Ezra Klein writes:

My guess is that Wal-Mart’s size and might is having much more profound effects on our economy through the demands and strains it places on suppliers than through their lowish wages and benefits for direct employees (although those labor standards give them a competitive advantage over chains with higher standards, and so we race to the bottom…).  So much as I want the latter to go up and unionization to rush across the land, I’m more worried that Wal-Mart’s size and status as the indispensable outlet for products, when coupled with their virtually maniacal (though fully understandable) demands for lower pricing, are pushing down wages and work conditions all throughout [sic] the land and, for that matter, the world.  Suppliers simply can’t pay better and push the marginal cost to consumers — Wal-Mart will drop them faster than you can say "Always low prices."

If our economy had more pockets of sluggish monopoly power, those highly stable and visible firms might be more unionized.  But unionization is not desirable per se.  Keep in mind, a well-functioning antitrust law raises real wages rather than lowering them.  Wal-Mart, by squeezing suppliers and lowering prices, does the same.  Wal-Mart suppliers are still selling at "price above the appropriate measure of marginal cost," albeit by less than before.  Asking for higher prices and higher monopoly profits — not as a spur to innovation, but in the hope that monopolizing suppliers will share those profits with their laborers — is a bad way to elevate the American standard of living.

I worry more when Wal-Mart acts to keep prices up.