IMF lending is generally conditional on specified policies and outcomes. These conditions usually are negotiated compromises between policies initially favored by the Fund and by the country's authorities. In some cases the authorities might be satisfied enough with the outcome to take...

Improving the effectiveness of financial assistance programs is a priority of international financial institutions (IFIs). This paper examines the effectiveness of alternative assistance instruments in a dynamic political economy framework. Economic policies of the receiving country are...

International financial assistance (loans and grants) can potentially raise recipients' welfare in two ways, by affecting a direct resource transfer and by facilitating efficiency-enhancing reforms. In practice, barriers to reform limit the potential of assistance to deliver these two dividends....

Whereas the economics discipline possesses a highly refined theoretical apparatus to analyze the effects of government behaviour on the economy, it has not (yet) managed to fully develop a positively formulated "economic theory of politics" that would permit the integration of the...

Liberia’s Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy (iPRS) sets out the emerging process and framework for recovery and reconstruction in the context of post-conflict Liberia. The iPRSP sets out the national socio-economic context, the preparatory process, dimensions of the emerging policy,...

This Annual Progress Report reviews the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and Economic and Social Plan for 2007 for Mozambique. The report presents the new simplified structure adopted in the Review of the First Half of 2007. In the international context, the evolution of the international...

This paper reports on progress made on Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plan as of 2010. The operational goal for Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plan is economic growth with increased employment and reduced inequality and poverty. The results for 2007–10...

The development policy of Cape Verde has evolved in a setting of severe structural constraints and persistent restrictions, with potential impediments to growth. The ongoing process of change adopts a transformation strategy closely linked to the consolidation of a democracy based on sound...

This 2010 Progress Report on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) focuses on the poverty condition in Mali. The incidence of poverty in Mali fell from 55.6 percent in 2001 to 43.6 percent in 2010. Over the past decade, poverty has fallen in rural areas, in Bamako, and in other urban...