Are Structural Adjustment Programmes Successful?

The answer to the question ‘Are the Structural Adjustment Programmes Successful?’ raises a number of difficult statistical and analytical problems. How would a country subject to a structural adjustment programme have done without the programme? This is a question of counterfactual evidence, not subject to rigorous proof or disproof. The method preferred by the Bretton Woods Institutions is to compare countries with a programme to countries without a programme, or ‘strong adjusters’ which have stuck with their programmes to ‘weak adjusters’ which have abandoned or failed to implement their programmes. But the two groups may differ in other relevant respects. There is also the well-known difficulty of establishing causation: are countries successful because they implemented programmes or were they able to implement programmes because they were successful? Finally, there must be a doubt whether the successful countries were successful because of the programmes or because of the supporting finance which accompanied the programmes: would the countries have been successful if they had just got the finance and would the countries without a programme have been successful if they had got the finance?