Professor Alan Ahearne:

We were looking at a certain type of surveillance, a surveillance of structural issues. We had recommended, for example, that in its annual surveillance of a country, the IMF should look for evidence of what we call "rent seeking" where there are distortions. The IMF does not do that, but we believe it would be a useful thing to do. We also talked about regulation of State owned enterprises, such as energy, as something that should be included in the IMF's surveillance. We also mentioned negative findings, but the IMF does not have the expertise to add value in the surveillance of the labour market. That was the purpose of the study.