IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2005-121.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Viability of Conditional Assistance Programs

Author

Listed:
  • Mr. Wolfgang Mayer
  • Mr. Alex Mourmouras

Abstract

Economic adjustment and reform programs, including those supported by international financial institutions (IFIs), must cope with informational asymmetries and special interest politics. This presents a particularly serious issue when IFIs make structural economic reforms a condition for providing economic assistance. This paper examines what conditions must be satisfied to make conditional assistance programs viable; that is, to ensure that the assistancereceiving government not only takes the assistance but also implements reforms, without compromising the country's political stability and the IFI's financial integrity. It is pointed out that tightly budgeted conditional assistance programs never bring about reforms, that the IFI's cost of viable programs rises with the dependence of the government on domestic interest groups, and that unconditional assistance might be viable when conditional assistance is not.

Suggested Citation

  • Mr. Wolfgang Mayer & Mr. Alex Mourmouras, 2005. "On the Viability of Conditional Assistance Programs," IMF Working Papers 2005/121, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2005/121
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=18081
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Allan Drazen, 2002. "Conditionality and Ownership in IMF Lending: A Political Economy Approach," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 49(Special i), pages 36-67.
    2. Dollar, David & Svensson, Jakob, 2000. "What Explains the Success or Failure of Structural Adjustment Programmes?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 894-917, October.
    3. Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994. "Protection for Sale," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-850, September.
    4. Hillman, Arye L, 1984. "Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives: Errata," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(1), pages 260-260, March.
    5. Bhagwati, Jagdish N., 1980. "Lobbying and welfare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 355-363, December.
    6. Michael Mussa & Miguel Savastano, 2000. "The IMF Approach to Economic Stabilization," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1999, Volume 14, pages 79-128, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Svensson, Jakob, 2003. "Why conditional aid does not work and what can be done about it?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 381-402, April.
    8. Hillman, Arye L, 1982. "Declining Industries and Political-Support Protectionist Motives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(5), pages 1180-1187, December.
    9. Wolfgang Mayer & Alexandros Mourmouras, 2005. "The Political Economy of IMF Conditionality: A Common Agency Model," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(4), pages 449-466, November.
    10. Bhagwati, Jagdish N. & Srinivasan, T. N., 1982. "The welfare consequences of directly-unproductive profit-seeking (DUP) lobbying activities : Price versus quantity distortions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(1-2), pages 33-44, August.
    11. Marchesi, Silvia & Thomas, Jonathan P, 1999. "IMF Conditionality as a Screening Device," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(454), pages 111-125, March.
    12. Drazen, Allan, 2002. "Conditionality and Ownership in IMF Lending: A Political Economy Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 3562, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Vines,David & Gilbert,Christopher L. (ed.), 2004. "The IMF and its Critics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521821544, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Graham Bird & Wolfgang Mayer & Alex Mourmouras, 2005. "The Viability of Economic Reform Programs Supported by the International Financial Institutions," School of Economics Discussion Papers 0605, School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    2. Suzi C. Kerr, 2013. "The Economics of International Policy Agreements to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 7(1), pages 47-66, January.
    3. Carsten Hefeker, 2006. "Project Aid or Budget Aid? The Interests of Governments and Financial Institutions," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(2), pages 241-252, May.
    4. Wolfgang Mayer & Alex Mourmouras, 2008. "IMF conditionality: An approach based on the theory of special interest politics," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 105-121, June.
    5. Sherif Khalifa, 2010. "Conditionality covenants: Commitment versus discretion in sovereign credit contracts," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(4), pages 411-423.
    6. Mr. Jeromin Zettelmeyer & Mr. Jonathan David Ostry & Mr. Olivier D Jeanne, 2008. "A Theory of International Crisis Lending and IMF Conditionality," IMF Working Papers 2008/236, International Monetary Fund.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Axel Dreher, 2009. "IMF conditionality: theory and evidence," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(1), pages 233-267, October.
    2. Alex Mourmouras & Wolfgang Mayer, 2009. "International Financial Assistance: A Loan Mechanism‐Design Approach," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 126-158, March.
    3. Temple, Jonathan R.W., 2010. "Aid and Conditionality," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4415-4523, Elsevier.
    4. Leo Wangler & Juan-Carlos Altamirano-Cabrera & Hans-Peter Weikard, 2013. "The political economy of international environmental agreements: a survey," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 387-403, September.
    5. Yu-Fu Chen & I-Hui Cheng, 2003. "Lobbying for Protection under Uncertainty: A Real Option Approach," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 155, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    6. Graham Bird, 2007. "The Imf: A Bird'S Eye View Of Its Role And Operations," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 683-745, September.
    7. Tan Ngoc Vu & Duc Hong Vo & Michael McAleer, 2019. "Rent seeking for export licenses: Application to the Vietnam rice market," Documentos de Trabajo del ICAE 2019-13, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico.
    8. Sébastien Jean & David Laborde & Will Martin, 2008. "Choosing Sensitive Agricultural Products in Trade Negotiations," Working Papers 2008-18, CEPII research center.
    9. Bin, Sheng, 2000. "The Political Economy of Trade Policy in China," Working Papers 10/2000, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy.
    10. Marcelo Olarreaga, 1999. "Foreign-owned Capital and Endogenous Tariffs," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 14, pages 606-624.
    11. Potrafke, Niklas, 2013. "Globalization and labor market institutions: International empirical evidence," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 829-842.
    12. Hylke Vandenbussche & Maurizio Zanardi, 2008. "What explains the proliferation of antidumping laws? [‘Antidumping Laws in the US; Use and Welfare Consequences’]," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 23(53), pages 94-138.
    13. Josh Ederington & Jenny Minier, 2003. "Is environmental policy a secondary trade barrier? An empirical analysis," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(1), pages 137-154, March.
    14. Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Maria Petrova & Ruben Enikolopov, 2008. "The Dracula effect: voter information and trade policy," Economics Working Papers 1296, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2020.
    15. Richard E. Baldwin & Frédéric Robert-Nicoud, 2007. "Entry and Asymmetric Lobbying: Why Governments Pick Losers," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 5(5), pages 1064-1093, September.
    16. Hillman, Arye L. & Van Long, Ngo & Soubeyran, Antoine, 2001. "Protection, lobbying, and market structure," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 383-409, August.
    17. Arye L. Hillman & Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. "Where are the rent seekers?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 124-141, June.
    18. Cole, Matthew T. & Lake, James & Zissimos, Ben, 2021. "Contesting an international trade agreement," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    19. Das, Satya P., 2001. "Endogenous distribution and the political economy of trade policy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 465-491, September.
    20. Helpman, E., 1995. "Politics and Trade Policy," Papers 30-95, Tel Aviv - the Sackler Institute of Economic Studies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    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:imf:imfwpa:2005/121. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    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.