This paper looks at whether the tendency of some governments to borrow short term is reinforced by financial support from the International Monetary Fund. I first present a model of sovereign debt issuance at various maturities featuring endogenous liquidity crises and maturity mismatches due to...

Sovereign default is the switching state between successful and unsuccessful Fund catalysis. We find the IMF to be effective in mobilising private capital flows to middle-income countries that participate in a Fund program, but do not restructure their debt. A debt restructuring is a clear...

In the wake of the global crisis the International Monetary Fund (IMF) increased its exposure to low-and middle-income countries and boosted the overhaul of its lending approach to enhance its role in preventing crises. This paper tests whether IMF lending has targeted countries most affected by...

In this paper, we examine the effect of IMF (imposed) programs on countries income inequality for the period 1963-2015. To deal with selection bias, we use a potential outcomes framework, which does not rely on the selection of matching variables and has the further advantage of uncovering the...

This paper examines the role of IMF-supported programs in crisis prevention; specifically, whether, conditional on an episode of intense market pressures, IMF financial support helps prevent a capital account crisis from developing and, if so, through what channels. In doing so, the paper...

To better fulfill its crisis-prevention mandate, IMF surveillance needs to provide stronger incentives for countries to follow good policies and for markets to avoid boom-bust cycles in capital flows. To this end, surveillance should culminate in a summary public assessment of the quality of a...

This paper assesses empirically the effectiveness of the IMF as a component of the Global Financial Safety Net by running a panel regression on a sample of emerging market countries' sovereign spreads. In particular, we check if the size of the Fund's lending capacity and the introduction of the...