Ownership and conditionality in IMF-supported programs: Back to Per Jacobsson’s time

Using a historical case study this article provides an example of how heterogeneity of interests within a government may affect the interplay between country ownership of reforms and conditionality in IMF-supported programs. The case study also highlights how pro-reformers’ preferences may be conditional on reforms advancing their personal agendas. This suggests a new issue to be addressed by formal models of conditionality. Two main themes emerge from the analysis: (a) the importance of a clear hierarchy to unify heterogeneous interests among decision makers; and, (b) a flexible country-tailored approach to conditionality can contribute to domestic ownership of reforms.

The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Our study contributes to the search for the elusive catalytic effect of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). Recent scholarship has found that the catalytic effect is conditional on political regime and program stringency. We contribute to this literature by developing and testing a theory which describes how the catalytic effect also varies by economic sector. This is a departure from existing studies, which have tended to focus on aggregate FDI flows after crises. Our findings corroborate previous research, which finds that in general IMF lending has a substantial and negative effect on FDI. However, we find that the negative effect is concentrated in sectors that are highly dependent on external capital and have low sunk costs in the host country. Our findings are robust to several alternative explanations common in IMF literature, namely the importance of IMF program design and the ability of governments to make credible commitments to reform. Substantively, our findings suggest that investors are more likely to use IMF lending as an escape hatch in countries where FDI is dependent on external capital and has low sunk costs.     

The political economy of labor market deregulation during IMF interventions

This study examines the relationship between policy interventions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and de jure labor rights. Combining two novel data sets with unprecedented country-year coverage – leximetric data on labor laws and disaggregated data on IMF conditionality – our analysis of up to 70 developing countries from 1980 to 2014 demonstrates that IMF-mandated labor market policy measures significantly reduce both individual and collective labor rights. Once we control for the effect of labor market policy measures, however, we find that collective labor rights increase in the wake of IMF programs. We argue that this result is explained by the impact of union pressure on governments which, in such a context, are imbued with the policy space to respond to domestic interest groups. The study has broader theoretical implications as to when international organizations are effective in constraining governments’ choices.     

Perhaps this time it's different: ideas and interests in shaping international responses to financial crises

The experience of the recent two decades of financial crises shows that donor countries and international financial institutions (IFIs) can respond to a crisis in a peripheral open economy by either of two crisis management strategies: either they can impose harsh conditionality to fix the domestic economy and prevent future moral hazard problems, or they can provide last-resort credit to restore market confidence. In some cases, the crisis management strategy changes as the crisis evolves. What are the factors that determine the choice of key donor countries and IFIs? This article traces the processes by which the USA and the International Monetary Fund designed the crisis management strategy in respect to the Asian crisis, and how Germany and the European Central Bank designed the response to the eurozone crisis, in order to understand how ideas regarding the causes and solutions of a financial crisis interact with the interests of key donor countries. The article argues that in both cases ideas and interests are mutually constituted, but in each case the mechanism that linked ideas and interests was different: whereas in the Asian case US interests led to policy innovation and experimentation and to a change in the crisis management strategy, in the European case ideas played a greater role in shaping German interests. The article explains this difference on the basis of the lessons learned by IFIs from the Asian crisis, which were then implemented in the eurozone case.     

美国为何不将中国汇率政策问题提交IMF

美国参议院议员Chuck Schumer针对中国的汇率问题提出了一项法案《舒默修正案》：中国政府在操纵人民币的汇率,要求联邦政府立法以对中国进口商品征收27．5%的惩罚性关税向中国政府施压,使人民币升值．本文分析了美国在国际层面解决问题与国内立法两者中所作出选择的原因,希望对我国在解决此种问题时能有所启示。     

Reforming Greece’s Tax Administration during the Financial Crisis: The Paradox of Power Asymmetry

ABSTRACT

This article examines the depoliticisation of Greece’s tax administration under the post-2010 bailout agreements in light of three alternative models of domestic change. It shows that one model (external incentives model that is based on power asymmetry) accounts for the direction of the reform but not how far the reform ended up going. There is little evidence in support of the second model (social learning) because of the absence of genuine programme ownership and evidence in support of the third model (lesson-drawing) is limited to the diagnosis of the problem. The final outcome was unintentionally shaped by key choices made by Greek governments in line with the literature on conditionality.     

论WTO与IMF的合作关系——以适用GATT的国际收支平衡条款为视角

本文具体探讨了在适用GATT的国际收支平衡条款时如何处理WTO与IMF之间关系。主要法律问题包括WTO之专家组向IMF咨询的权利、WTO下国际收支平衡委员会与专家组之间的机构平衡问题等。     

The International Monetary Fund: A review of the recent evidence

A review of recent quantitative studies on the International Monetary Fund reveals that much of the conventional wisdom is incorrect. Recent studies have demonstrated a new degree of methodological rigor, have drawn more heavily upon insights from political science, and have asked a number of new questions. We review studies of participation in IMF programs, design of IMF conditionality, implementation and enforcement of IMF conditions, conventional program effects and catalytic effects. At every stage, we find substantial evidence of the influence of major IMF shareholders, of the Fund’s own organizational imperatives, and of domestic politics within borrowing countries. We conclude that very little is known with certainty about the effects of IMF lending, but that a great deal has been learned about the mechanics of IMF programs that will have to be taken into account in order to obtain unbiased estimates of those effects.

Following the donor-designed path to Mozambique’s US$2.2 billion secret debt deal

Strenuous efforts by donors and lenders over four decades turned Mozambique from a socialist success story into a neoliberal capitalist one. The private sector dominates; a domestic elite dependent on foreign companies has been created. But a secret US$2.2 billion arms and fishing boat deal involving Swiss and Russian banks and Mozambican purchases from France, Germany, and Israel, with large profits on all sides, was a step too far down the donor’s capitalist road. The International Monetary Fund cut off its programme and western donors ended budget support.     

Games borrower governments play: the implementation of economic adjustment programmes in Cyprus and Portugal

Research on the Economic Adjustment Programmes (EAPs) for Eurozone crisis countries has so far acknowledged the role of creditor countries and Troika institutions or has examined the economic effects or structural determinants of domestic implementation processes. The role of borrower governments as strategic actors within the ‘Troika complex’ has been neglected. Taking Cyprus and Portugal as cases in point, the article shows how reform-oriented borrower governments used the interaction with the Troika to overcome veto player opposition to programme implementation. Drawing on the two-level game and on negotiation theory, the study discusses borrower strategies in response to opposition from the court or parliament, and the costs of no agreement. Reform-oriented governments mostly used commitments to the international level or Troika pressure to pursue coercive strategies vis-à-vis domestic opponents. High costs of no agreement seem to be a necessary means to pass on political and market pressure through coercion.