Twenty years of the G20: Has it changed global economic governance?

Abstract

The G20 has become the preeminent forum for international economic coordination. Twenty years after its creation, the paper reviews its performance with respect to the coordination of macroeconomic policies. The retrospective assessment focuses on two main questions: (i) Have the G20 summits succeeded in promoting macroeconomic policies with positive cross-border consequences, while preventing the opposite? (ii) To what extent has expanding the G7 to a diverse group of emerging and developing economies significantly changed the discourse and affected substantive outcomes? We argue that the G20 played a key role during the crisis of 2008, but policy coordination has been problematic since. Our review suggests that the G20 Presidencies of the emerging economies have made considerable efforts to shape the agenda toward issues of their interest, but have not always prevailed, notably on issues of global financial governance.