IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v59y2015i1p120-148.html

Politics and IMF Conditionality

Author

Listed:
  • Axel Dreher

    (Alfred-Weber-Institute for Economics, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
    University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany
    CESifo, Munich, Germany
    IZA, Bonn, Germany)

  • Jan-Egbert Sturm

    (CESifo, Munich, Germany
    ETH Zurich, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, Zürich, Switzerland)

  • James Raymond Vreeland

    (Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government, Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA)

Abstract

Bailouts sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are famous for their conditionality: in return for continued installments of desperately needed loans, governments must comply with austere policy changes. Many have suggested, however, that politically important countries face rather weak stringency. Obstacles to testing this hypothesis include finding a measure of political importance that is not plagued by endogeneity and obtaining data on IMF conditionality. We propose to measure political importance using temporary membership on the UN Security Council and analyze a newly available data set on the level of conditionality attached to (a maximum of) 314 IMF arrangements with 101 countries over the 1992–2008 period. We find a negative relationship: Security Council members receive about 30 percent fewer conditions. This suggests that the major shareholders of the IMF trade softer conditionality in return for political influence over the Security Council.

Suggested Citation

  • Axel Dreher & Jan-Egbert Sturm & James Raymond Vreeland, 2015. "Politics and IMF Conditionality," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 59(1), pages 120-148, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:59:y:2015:i:1:p:120-148
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jcr.sagepub.com/content/59/1/120.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O19 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - International Linkages to Development; Role of International Organizations
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • F35 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Aid

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:59:y:2015:i:1:p:120-148. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.