TY  - JOUR
AU  - Barro,Robert J.
AU  - Lee,Jong-Wha
TI  - IMF Programs: Who is Chosen and What Are the Effects?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8951
PY  - 2002
Y2  - May 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8951
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8951.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert J. Barro
Department of Economics
Littauer Center 218
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-3203
Fax: 617/496-8629
E-Mail: rbarro@harvard.edu

Jong-Wha Lee
Economics Research Department
Asian Development Bank
6 ADB Avenue, Mandaluyong City
1550 Metro Manila, Philippines
Tel: +63 2 632 4900
Fax: +63 2 636 2183
E-Mail: jongwha@korea.ac.kr
AB  - IMF lending practices respond to economic conditions but are also sensitive to political-economy variables.  Specifically, the sizes and frequencies of loans are influenced by a country's presence at the Fund, as measured by the country's share of quotas and professional staff.  IMF lending is also sensitive to a country's political and economic proximity to some major shareholding countries of the IMF -- the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.  We measured political proximity by voting patterns in the United Nations and economic proximity by bilateral trading volumes.  These results are of considerable interest for their own sake but also provide instrumental variables for estimating the effects of IMF lending on economic performance.  Instrumental estimates indicate that the size of IMF lending is insignificantly related to economic growth in the contemporaneous five-year period but has a significantly negative effect in the subsequent five years.
ER  -