Indeed, both institutions were designed to discourage individual countries from adopting short-sighted policies that would harm other economies’ performance, incite retaliatory action, and ultimately damage the entire world economy. In other words, they were intended to prevent the kind of beggar-thy-neighbor policies that many major economies adopted during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
布雷顿森林会议召开时，参与者都知道IMF和世界银行事关全球稳定。事实上，这两个机构就是为了阻止个体国家采取可能伤害其他国家表现、导致报复政策并最终伤害世界经济整体的短视政策而设计的。换句话说，它们的成立是为了防止众多主要经济体在大萧条和20世纪30年代所实施的以邻为壑政策。