Mark Plant, assistant director of the Policy Development and Review Department of the International Monetary Fund, comes to Bates College to offer a lecture on IMF policies regarding poverty at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 15, in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall, Andrews Road.

Plant's lecture is titled "The IMF and Poor Countries: Ideas on Poverty or Poverty of Ideas?" Sponsored by the college economics department and the Bates Economics Society, a student organization, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6085.

Plant is primarily responsible for the development of IMF policies toward low-income countries. Previously he was the Policy Development and Review Department official responsible for reviewing all loans to low-income countries, and earlier still served as chief of IMF missions to Ghana, Guinea, Cape Verde and Chad.

Before joining the IMF, Plant served as deputy undersecretary and acting undersecretary for economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce. He began his career teaching economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Princeton University, where he published papers on labor economics, econometrics and macroeconomics.

The IMF was created in 1945 to help promote the health of the world economy. It promotes international monetary cooperation, facilitates international trade and exchange stability, assists in sustaining a multilateral system of payments and makes its resources available to members experiencing balance-of-payments difficulties.