In a 2005 article in this journal, Genberg poses the question of whether countries with IMF programs have “privileged access” to international capital markets. In attempting to answer this question, he cautions about reading too much into some of the recent literature. In this paper, we...

The principal cause of the balance of payments deficits of the non-oil developing countries has altered since 1973: exogenous factors now play a far more important role than previously. The appropriateness of the conditions conventionally attached to IMF drawings needs to be re-examined in this...

Traditional models have encountered problems in explaining the ac- cumulation of international reserves, particularly in Asia, in the period since the late 1990s. One suggestion has been that countries have sought to self insure against future crises, either because of a perceived increase in...

Recent theoretical and empirical research suggests that under certain conditions IMF agreements induce additional inflows of finance from other private sources. This paper provides new empirical evidence on this catalytic effect using a treatment effects model to correct for selectivity. It...

In a 2005 article in this journal, Genberg poses the question of whether countries with IMF programs have “privileged access” to international capital markets. In attempting to answer this question, he cautions about reading too much into some of the recent literature. In this paper, we...

This paper examines the claim that the IMF catalyzes other capital flows. We identify a series of propositions based on recent theoretical work, use a treatment effects model to deal with selection bias, and examine whether the IMF catalyzes both aggregate private financial flows and important...

The International Monetary Fund is the world’s premier international financial institution with 184 member countries and active programmes in a significant number of them at any one time. The Fund attracts a great deal of attention, much of it critical. But the discussion is often polemic in...

IMF supported programs have conventionally been assessed by examining their effects on intermediate variables and final outcomes. More recently greater attention has been paid to implementation on the assumption that in order to work programs need to be implemented. Empirical studies have begun...