The programs of the International Monetary Fund were originally designed to provide short-term assistance to countries implementing policies to address balance of payments disequilibria. In recent decades, however, the Fund has instituted new facilities with longer time horizons, while many...

Recent research on the International Monetary Fund has focused on the adoption, implementation and impact of their lending programs and their political dimensions. This paper evaluates this literature and suggests promising areas of future work. The first area to be surveyed deals with the...

This paper evaluates the literature on the lending programs of the IMF. The first section deals with the initiation of a Fund program, which has been shown to be influenced by political and institutional variables. A second focus of research analyzes the design and implementation of Fund...