The International Monetary Fund: A review of the recent evidence

Steinwand, Martin C.; Stone, Randall W.

doi:10.1007/s11558-007-9026-x

Cited by 155 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 72 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

118

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For evidence that IMF lending reduces growth see Barro & Lee (2005), Bordo & Schwartz (2000), and Przeworski & Vreeland (2000), for evidence of the beneficial effects of IMF programs for growth see Dicks-Mireaux et al (2000), Evrensel (2002), andHutchison (2004). Ul Haque & Kahn (1998) and Steinwand & Stone (2008) provide a more detailed summary about the effects of participation in IMF programs on macroeconomic variables such as economic growth, inflation, balance of payments, and current account deficits.…”

Section: Empirical Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the Effects of IMF Programs on Poverty and Inequality

Oberdabernig

2013

World Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Empirical Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting the Effects of IMF Programs on Poverty and Inequality

Oberdabernig

2013

World Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…To be sure, the staff recognize the concerns and preferences of the Board directors, and some powerful states are, in selected cases, capable of advancing their interests through informal contacts with staff throughout the loan negotiation process (Stone 2008;2011).…”

Section: The Imf As An Autonomous Agentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The silent revolution:” How the staff exercise informal governance over IMF lending

Chwieroth

2012

Rev Int Organ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines how the staff exercise informal governance over lending decisions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund). The essential component of designing any IMF program, assessing the extent to which a borrowing country is likely to fulfil its policy commitments, is based partly on informal staff judgments subject to informal incentives and normative orientations not dictated by formal rules and procedures. Moreover, when country officials are unable to commit to policy goals of the IMF, the IMF staff may bypass the formal channel of policy dialogue through informal contacts and negotiations with more like-minded actors outside the policymaking process. Exercising informal governance in these ways, the staff are motived by informal career advancement incentives and normative orientations associated with the organization's culture to provide favourable treatment to borrowers composed of policy teams sympathetic toward their policy goals. The presence of these sympathetic interlocutors provides the staff both with greater confidence a lending program will achieve success and an opportunity to support officials who share their policy beliefs. I assess these arguments using a new dataset that proxies shared policy beliefs based on the professional characteristics of IMF staff and developing country officials. The evidence supports these arguments: larger loan commitments are extended to countries where government officials and the Fund staff share similar professional training. The analysis implies informal governance operates in IOs not just via state influence but also through the evolving makeup, incentive structure, and normative orientations of their staffs.

show abstract

“…Beginning about the same time, a surge of quantitative empirical work arose that focused on particular international organizations. A flood of research emerged on the politics of the IMF (Stone 2002(Stone , 2004(Stone , 2008Vreeland 2003;Gould 2006;Dreher and Vaubel 2004;Dreher and Jensen 2007;Chwieroth 2010;Pop-Eleches 2009;Copelovitch 2010;Steinwand and Stone 2008) and the world bank (Dreher et al 2009;Fleck and Kilby 2006). Meanwhile, an even larger literature was growing that studied all aspects of policy making in the European Union with an increasing degree of empirical and theoretical sophistication Schneider 2009;Thompson et al 2006).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Informal governance in international organizations: Introduction to the special issue

Stone

2013

Rev Int Organ

Self Cite

130

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

International organizations have proliferated in recent decades. Virtually every issue of broad international concern is the subject of an international agreement that is administered by an international organization. Broad powers are delegated to some of these international agents, many of which exercise significant discretion and authority. International courts with broad jurisdiction and hundreds of more specialized judicial organs have been established to interpret a rapidly expanding body of international law. The organizational capacity of international governance has increased, while the capacity of domestic governance has declined in a range of failed states and contested territories. Meanwhile, the depth of policy coordination demanded by international agreements has led to an unprecedented level of international policy activism by some of the leading international organizations, including the IMF, the WTO, and the EU. Given the importance of what international organizations do, it is increasingly important to understand how international organizations actually work.Most of our theoretical models of international organizations are based on their formal attributes rather than on their behavior. Formal rules are important, of course, and generally set the parameters within which informal interactions take place, but shared expectations and extra-legal practices often modify or overrule written provisions. As a result, models based on legal provisions can be misleading. For example, there are numerous international organizations in which votes are never taken, or are almost always unanimous; nevertheless, analyses of their governance often focus on the equilibria of majority voting games. Since the game being played does not involve building minimum winning coalitions, however, voting models based on majority voting can shed little light on the degree of influence that powerful countries exert over decision making, or on the practical limits of that influence. Similarly, procedural models of EU legislation assume that the game being played follows the legal procedures prescribed in the EU treaties; but this is often not the Rev Int

show abstract

The International Monetary Fund: A review of the recent evidence

Cited by 155 publications

References 72 publications

Revisiting the Effects of IMF Programs on Poverty and Inequality

Revisiting the Effects of IMF Programs on Poverty and Inequality

“The silent revolution:” How the staff exercise informal governance over IMF lending

Informal governance in international organizations: Introduction to the special issue

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About