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...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (the IMF) and a country has for the optimal design of conditional reforms. Our model predicts that when agency problems are especially severe, and/or IMF information is valuable, a centralized control is indeed...

IMF programs are often considered to carry a "stigma" that triggers adverse market reactions. We show that such a negative IMF effect disappears when accounting for endogenous selection into programs. To proxy for a country's access to financial markets, we use credit ratings and investor...

The empirical evidence currently available in the literature regarding the effects of a country's IMF program participation on its output growth is rather mixed. To shed new evidence on this issue, in this paper we specify a state-dependent panel data model accounting in particular for program...

This research explores the long-run effect of industrialization on the process of development. In contrast to conventional wisdom that views industrial development as a catalyst for economic growth, highlighting its persistent effect on economic prosperity, the study establishes that while the...

We use an excludable instrument to test the effect of foreign aid on economic growth in a sample of 96 recipient countries over the 1974-2009 period. We interact donor government fractionalization with a recipient country's probability of receiving aid. The results show that fractionalization...

While the short-term growth consequences of natural disasters are comparatively well studied, there is little knowledge how disasters affect long-run growth. Based on truly exogenous storm indicators, derived from a meteorological database, we show that the growth effects of tropical storms go...

In this empirical study we assess both linear and nonlinear relationship between total taxation and several tax items with real per capita GDP growth rates for 43 developing countries between 1990 and 2019. We use panel data techniques to evaluate the effects of taxation on economic growth for...

Economic freedom and economic growth can be connected in most countries, but it is often necessary to specify those aspects of economic freedom that can foster economic growth. This paper examines the nexus between economic freedom and economic growth in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs)...

We assess empirically the role of the World Bank’s Country Policy so-called fiscal policy rating variables (fiscal rating, debt rating and revenue rating) on economic growth in the 46 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the world, during the period 1990-2022. We also investigate the role of...