Evaluating the impact of IMF programs: A comparison of matching and instrumental-variable estimators

We examine the impact of IMF programs on economic performance in 95 developing countries over the period 1993–2002. Three macroeconomic measures of economic performance are considered: the real per capita economic growth rate, the ratio of the fiscal surplus to GDP, and the ratio of the current account surplus to GDP. Three estimation techniques are used: censored-sample, full-sample instrumental-variable, and matching. Substantively, we find little statistical support that IMF programs contemporaneously improve real economic growth in participating countries, but stronger evidence of an improvement in economic growth in years following a program. We find that both the fiscal ratio and the current-account ratio improve contemporaneously with IMF participation relative to the counterfactual, with effects in succeeding years differing little from the impact effects. We conclude that the program-effect estimates of matching and other estimators will differ largely because of the sample included in estimation. Matching by its nature excludes country episodes associated with extreme values of the propensity score, while the instrumental-variable estimator includes those. If there is heterogeneity of performance response in extreme vs. moderate cases, the estimates differ systematically between the two techniques. JEL codes F33 · F34 · C34     

It's a Cultural Thing: Thoughts on a Troubled cia

The CIA has recently been the subject of numerous presidential commissions and Congressional committees concerned either with the details of individual operations or with sweeping reforms in structure and organization. One of the repeated themes in these reports is that the Agency must change its “culture.” This article identifies and offers possible remedies for cultural problems in the two directorates (the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Operations) and Agency-wide, and argues for enhanced accountability.     

Sovereignty as Responsibility

This article examines the development of a new normative principle of international order, sovereignty as responsibility; its communitarian implications; and the ways in which the newly conceived responsibility of the “international community” to protect the people of states failing to live up to their responsibilities as defined by international norms can come to terms with the notion of democratic self-government.     

What Is Democracy? Liberal Institutions and Stability in Changing Societies

Is it possible to export democracy? That question underlies current U.S. foreign policy, and answering it requires an operational definition of democracy that distinguishes its essential attributes from circumstantial ones. Liberal representative government under law, sustained by a political culture that accepts open disagreement and demands accountability, provides the only form of democracy that has sustained itself over time. Democracy typically emerges from within a society, and history demonstrates the difficulty of making democracy work. Imposing it externally presents further challenges while risking a backlash. The project of spreading democracy must therefore be separated from the objective of establishing a stable order favoring American interests so that the latter end can be achieved by more modest means.     

A Consumer Perspective on Forensic DNA Banking

This article describes a model of DNA banking that incorporates appropriate consumer influence on the design and use of DNA data banks. This model values input of consumer stakeholders in key decisions, including contracts between donors, researchers and the bank.     

Patent Production at a European Research University: Exploratory Evidence at the Laboratory Level

Most studies of academic patenting focus on the university as the unit of analysis. In contrast, we examine this phenomenon at the laboratory level. Based on a sample of 83 research laboratories of Louis Pasteur University (ULP, Strasbourg, France) from 1993 to 2000, we constructed a panel data set that allows us to discriminate between patents that are owned by the university and those that are owned by firms and other organizations but invented by faculty members. We use these data to estimate a patent production function and find that university-owned patents are more responsive to specific public funding, while non-university-owned patents are more responsive to industrial funding. Our results also highlight the importance to control for disciplinary and institutional differences, since they significantly affect the production of the different kinds of ULP patents.