Steinwand and Stone: The International Monetary Fund: A Review of the Recent Evidence

Steinwand, MC, and RW Stone. 2008. The International Monetary Fund: A review of the recent evidence. The Review of International Organizations 3, no. 2: 123-149.

"We review studies of participation in IMF programs, design of IMF conditionality, implementation and enforcement of IMF conditions, conventional program effects and catalytic effects. At every stage, we find substantial evidence of the influence of major IMF shareholders, of the Fund's own organizational imperatives, and of domestic politics within borrowing countries. We conclude that very little is known with certainty about the effects of IMF lending, but that a great deal has been learned about the mechanics of IMF programs that will have to be taken into account in order to obtain unbiased estimates of those effects" (from abstract).

There is an overview of critics of the IMF on page 124.

"The functionalist perspective, which is the one most widely adopted in the IMF literature, emphasizes the element of common interest in cooperation [Keohane]...Institutions, in this perspective, arise as solutions to collective action problems..." (126). "In contrast, the structural approach emphasizes differences in national interests and the distribution of power [Krasner}...Structural explanations treat the existence of conflicts of interest as fundamental, although the particular reasons for conflict vary with the international context" (126). "The public choice framework [Vaubel]...emphasizes the perverse incentives created by principal-agent relationships under incomplete information. The objectives of international bureaucrats are to increase their power, prerequisites and organizational slack, and elected officials delegate authority to them in order to escape their own accountability to voters. It is often argued that the IMF is able to provide political cover for governments that want reform but face opposition at home [Puntnam, Haggard, Kaufman, Vreeland] (127).

There is a review of the variables covered in IMF analysis by a variety of authors.

Conclusion: selection effects in methodology are quite important. Further research topics are then posited.