Senior fellow Arvind Subramanian was quoted in an article on Radio Free Asia on the IMF.
From the Article
Since two of the top five positions at the IMF are already filled by Asians, allowing China to take the top post would be hard for most countries to accept, some experts said.
European leaders have strongly hinted that they would not tolerate any Strauss-Kahn successor from outside their continent. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there are "good reasons" for Europe, the IMF's biggest capital contributor, to keep the post, referring to the eurozone's debt crisis which has been a top IMF agenda under Strauss-Kahn.
Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, is considered by many as a front-runner for the IMF post, but she may face objections as four of the Fund's 10 managing directors have been French and her appointment would be the second time the post was held by successive French politicians.
“[Our] point is that there are more credible candidates from emerging countries this time than arguably ever before,” economists Arvind Subramanian and Nicolas Véron of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank, said in a report this week.
Since Asia is at present the location of the world’s strongest-growing economies, and the countries of Asia are clamoring for more of a role in all international institutions, the IMF would do well to look carefully at candidates from that continent, they said.
Under a long-standing agreement between the United States and Europe, the IMF top job has always gone to a European, while an American has led its sister organization, the World Bank. Some emerging market nations, which have gained power at the IMF in recent years, have said candidates from their countries should get a shot at the top job.
However, a sense of inevitability grew on Thursday that Europe would retain the post, with French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde seen as the most likely choice. "The reality is this process is going to result in a European getting this job," a Canadian official said on condition of anonymity.
hough the Obama administration would like to see changes, sources close to the IMF and U.S. Treasury said that in the end it will back a European for the top job so as not to jeopardize its captaincy of the World Bank, which would anger U.S. lawmakers who control contributions to both institutions.
issue is especially sensitive given that Congress is set to shortly consider funding for the poverty-fighting institution, said Arvind Subramanian, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute think tank and a former IMF economist.
"I think Congress is not prepared to give up control over either institution ... But at some stage, Congress and the U.S. public will have to see what's happening in the world as a whole, that the U.S. isn't calling all the shots," he said."The more you rig the institution, the less credible it becomes," he added.