The lending criteria applied by the IMF and the World Bank have been converging for some time. Considering also that since the floating of exchange rates in the early seventies the IMF seems to have lost in importance as a monetary institution, debate is growing on the question of whether the...

Following the introduction of its structural adjustment loans the World Bank became the object of the criticism that had until then been directed only at the IMF and its stabilisation and adjustment programmes. This article shows that structural adjustment loans do in fact take the traditional...

The adjustment crisis of the oil-importing developing countries has raised the question as to the specific roles of the IMF and the World Bank in the process of structural adjustment and the actual relationship between their different concepts and programmes. What are the areas of cooperation...

Measures of different kinds are needed to cope with the manifold tasks arising in international development finance, and a variety of instruments, models and concepts have been suggested in the international discussion. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a subsidiary of the World Bank,...

The loans of the IMF, World Bank, and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) are excluded from debt restructuring. This is the result of their preferred creditor status. There are two justifications for the preferred creditor status of MDBs: (a) they give concessional loans, and (b) they...