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Debt Relief for Low Income Countries: Is it Effective and Efficient?
Author(s) -
Bird Graham,
Milne Alistair
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.594
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1467-9701
pISSN - 0378-5920
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9701.00509
Subject(s) - conditionality , debt , work (physics) , economics , economic policy , public economics , macroeconomics , political science , law , mechanical engineering , politics , engineering
Although a great deal of attention has been paid to IMF conditionality and to the effects of IMF programmes, relatively little attention has been paid to their completion rate. However, the record is that the clear majority of Fund programmes are uncompleted. Is this a cause for concern and why is it that the completion rate is low? In principle, a number of factors could be at work. Gaining a better understanding of what these are should allow policy reform at the IMF to improve performance. While there are things that we do not know and need to know about programme completion, we know enough to delineate the broad direction that policy should take.