By Nicholas Stern

When John Maynard Keynes from Britain and Harry Dexter White from the US were designing a system on international economic institutions, agreed at Bretton Woods in July 1944, their judgments were shaped by the preceding three decades of depression and World Wars.

The colonial structures were still in place and the Cold War was about to begin. But the world has profoundly changed in the past 65 years with decolonisation, globalisation, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China, India and other leading developing countries.