While international human rights law promulgates that economic, social and cultural rights (economic rights) be supported just as fervently as civil and political rights, the reality is, they are not. The Greek debt crisis and resulting austerity measures demonstrate how a growing world economy...

Using a new database of World Bank loans to support financial sector development, the authors investigate whether countries that received such loans experienced more rapid growth on standard indicators of financial development than countries that did not. They account for self-selection with...

This paper uses a fixed-effects model to analyze the effect of IMF programs on poverty with data from 82 countries during 1985 to 2000. Two indicators of poverty, infant mortality rates and the Human Development Index (HDI), are utilized, and the effects of the IMF's concessionary and...

Fiscal policy and net capital inflows in developing countries are procyclical. A large amount of literature has examined this phenomenon and explored its consequences for aggregate fluctuations. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are an important source of external finance for governments and...

The paper shows that international government borrowing from multilateral development banks is countercyclical while international government borrowing form private sector lenders is procyclical. The countercyclicality of official lending is mostly driven by the behavior of the World Bank...

Fiscal policy is procyclical in developing countries. An ample literature has explained this fact and explored its consequences for aggregate cyclical fluctuations. Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) are an important source of finance for governments and therefore play a role in the execution...

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between the pattern of fiscal policy and the demand for international reserves in developing countries, and how this relationship is associated with political risk and conditional access to global capital markets. It finds evidence that for...