Strategy research often aims to empirically establish a causal relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable such as firm performance. For many important strategy research questions, however, traditional empirical techniques are not sufficient to establish causal effects...

In this paper we analyze whether IMF conditionality is exclusively designed in line with observable economic indicators or, alternatively, whether it is partly driven by its major shareholder, the US. A panel data analysis of 206 letters of intent from 38 countries over the period 4/1997-2/2003...