Summary The global economic crisis will compel many countries to revise key economic policies, including their exchange rate regime. The International Monetary Fund will have significant influence on their choices, and has exhibited a bias against intermediate regimes. We examine the link...

IMF programmes have sought to balance economic adjustment and external financing in part by relying on catalysing capital inflows from other sources. This paper reviews the mechanisms by which catalysis is believed to operate, and the evidence pertaining to its existence. The conclusion is that...

It has frequently been assumed that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) plays an important catalysing role in mobilizing international capital for developing countries and countries in transition. The Fund has conventionally been depicted as a "gatekeeper" that unlocks financial flows from...

Particularly in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, there has been much discussion of the association between the International Monetary Fund and bilateral aid flows. What role should the Fund be playing in helping to achieve the MDGs? Some observers have suggested that the Fund...

From being widely seen in early 2008 as an institution in decline and irrelevant to many of the problems then facing the world economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has more recently been presented as an international financial institution that is of essential importance in the...

The IMF advertises itself as playing a catalytic role, whereby its lending programmes induce other providers of finance to invest or lend as well. The theoretical foundations of this claim are reviewed and found to be questionable. The empirical evidence also appears to contradict the notion of...

In recent years, the International Monetary Fund has seen a spate of critical analyses of its lending activities. It has even been suggested that politics influences the allocation of IMF lending with powerful industrialized countries being able to use Fund lending to further their own...

1. Introduction and overview : the purposes and operations of the IMF -- 2. IMF Quotas -- 3. The IMF's lending facilities -- 4. Aggregate IMF lending -- 5. Participation in IMF programmes -- 6. The implementation of IMF programmes -- 7. The effects of IMF programmes on economic growth -- 8. IMF...