Bretton Woods Institutions

The Bretton Woods Institutions—consisting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF, the Fund) and the World Bank Group (the Bank)—were created in 1944 to help promote the economic health of an interconnected world economy. The Bretton Woods Conference, held during the month of July in 1944, as World War II was coming to a close, was officially called the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at the Hotel Washington in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, hence the name the Bretton Woods Institutions.

Delegations from 44 governments agreed on a framework for economic cooperation designed to avoid repetition of the disastrous economic policies that contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s and subsequently World War II. During the 1930s, as economic activity in many industrial countries weakened, countries ...