The IMF attempts to stabilize private capital flows to emerging markets by providing public monitoring and emergency finance. In analyzing its role we contrast cases where banks and bondholders do the lending. Banks have a natural advantage in monitoring and creditor coordination, while bonds...

Academic studies of aid to Africa have typically asked how "we" in the West can get "them" in Africa to adopt economic and political systems that look like our own. Suspicion of African politics has led to the assumption that governments seeking to resist the developmental models promoted by...

Development assistance has for many decades been aiming to support developing countries’ strategies to achieve more sustainable development. Yet, evidence shows that the impact of such assistance has been well below expectations. This study examines the efforts of assistance providers and...

Behavior, attitudes, and values differ extremely throughout the world. Whenever two members of different groups such as cultures, nations, or societies interact, such differences become a determining factor for the process of interaction. When thinking of such areas where interactions among...

This paper analyzes whether and to what extent non-governmental organizations (NGOs) outperform official donors by allocating aid in a way that renders effective poverty alleviation more likely. We employ Probit and Tobit models and make use of an exceptionally detailed database that allows an...

Everyone knows that aid is not working as intended, and that something must change. The big question is how to change the status quo. The current international aid debate is characterized by dichotomies and over-simplified generalizations. In order to push the debate forward and identify...

Like all institutions, international financial institutions (IFIs) (1) are creatures of their past. Their organisation and orientation reflect the economic and political contexts in which they were born and evolved. So, too, will their future be shaped by global trends and the ways they respond...

Reconstruction and development. The Bretton Woods conference of 1944 gave rise to a set of global economic institutions - the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD or World Bank) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),...

Since the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were launched at Bretton Woods more than 50 years ago, and the regional development banks in subsequent decades, the world economy has changed in important respects. In considering the role of international financial institutions (IFIs),...

The international economic order pursued by the Bretton Woods 'founding fathers' was based on the idea that a combination of different international institutions would be needed to keep the world financial system from degenerating into periodic and destructive crises (Mikesell, 1994). Following...