African countries inevitably take loans due to lack of fiscal space more so, due to the devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic in Africa, several loans and bailouts are expected from the West. These loans come with conditions which have policy implications. This study aims at examining...

The process of political and economic liberalisation in Benin is regarded as a model for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. Benin made history by becoming the first African country to overthrow a military dictator by democratic means. The civilian coup d'etat cleared the way for economic recovery,...

The IMF provides training to its membership in its core areas of expertise mainly through its Institute for Capacity Development (ICD) or formerly the IMF Institute (INS). This paper looks at the methods that ICD used to evaluate this activity and analyzes the data collected over the period...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF, or the Fund) has been uninterruptedly providing concessional financing to low-income countries since 1976. This financing has been channeled practically in its entirety under the same financial instrument, namely a voluntary participation trust fund that is...

There is a perception that IMF programmes are not catalytic and instead associated with large capital outflows, higher refinancing costs for sovereigns and adverse movements in stock markets. This has led to concerns that an expectation of adverse effects of IMF programmes may deter countries...

IMF programs are often considered to carry a “stigma” that triggers adverse market reactions. We show that such a negative IMF effect disappears when accounting for endogenous selection into programs. To proxy for a country's access to financial markets, we use credit ratings and investor...

This book chapter offers some analysis of the historic role of the UN, the educational activities of the OECD, and current level of activities of the World Bank and the IMF with regards to standard setting. In order to do this, this chapter describes some details of these four organizations...

Given the growing real and financial integration of economies worldwide, there is a need for the presence of supranational mechanisms to address crisis situations. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the multilateral institution at the core of the global financial safety net (GFSN). The...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is one of the post-Second World War international organizations set up to promote good international economic cooperation among states. Unlike international organizations like the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization (which succeeded the...

The financial assistance the International Monetary Fund provides is expected to catalyze private capital flows. Such a catalytic effect has, however, proven empirically elusive. This paper deviates from the standard approach based on the net capital inflow to study instead the Fund's catalytic...