Hard work, and More: How to successfully conduct adjustment with official assistance

What is needed for a country to successfully adjust after a crisis episode is a subject of much debate including in the euro area where four out of seventeen countries were in a full economic adjustment programme by end 2013. We identify adjustment needs by a country's decision to approach the IMF for official assistance. We then investigate the factors conducive to successful exit from official assistance during more than 170 adjustment episodes by means of a panel regression framework. We define success as a resumption of growth and a significant debt reduction. Our econometric results suggest hard work, i.e. policy action such as fiscal adjustment and decisive financial sector repair, play an important role for the probability of a successful exit. We also find that more stringent conditionality, especially in the structural area, increases the chances of success. Supportive external conditions further enhance the prospects for a durable and successful exit. These results also hold up when success is instead defined as the ability of the country to finance itself on capital markets.