Catalysing private capital flows and IMF programs: some remaining questions

In a 2005 article in this journal, Genberg poses the question of whether countries with IMF programs have “privileged access” to international capital markets. In attempting to answer this question, he cautions about reading too much into some of the recent literature. In this paper, we briefly examine the so-called catalytic effect in a way that attempts to overcome some of his concerns. Our results suggest that it is unwise to place too much emphasis on any set of specific results that may not be generalized or robust across different methodologies and different types of capital flows.