Imf-Supported Programs and Income Convergence in Low-Income Countries

Continuing the empirical debate on the effects of IMF-supported programs on participatingcountries' macroeconomic performance, we focus on the issue of whether these programsaccelerate conditional ß-convergence among low-income countries (LICs). We use anunbalanced panel dataset for 85 LICs over the period 1986-2015 and employ two differenteconometric methods to address the selection bias problem. Our empirical results suggestthat the rate of conditional income per capita convergence is faster among LICs withextended IMF support than that in countries without support or with intermittent support