Professional ties that bind: how normative orientations shape IMF conditionality

Chwieroth, Jeffrey ORCID: 0000-0001-8965-0621 (2015) Professional ties that bind: how normative orientations shape IMF conditionality. Review of International Political Economy, 22 (4). pp. 757-787. ISSN 0969-2290

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Abstract

Staff play a key part in designing IMF conditionality, and yet the literature provides a narrow view of their motivations. This article shows how the design of IMF conditionality is linked to the normative orientations of the staff and their common professional training. Professional ties from similar training help to bind the staff together around a shared set of normative orientations that inform the IMF's policy goals. When borrowing-country officials do not share these orientations, the staff are motivated to tighten conditionality. This behaviour also fits with staff concerns about time-inconsistency and moral hazard. I find robust statistical support for this argument using a dataset based on the professional ties that exist between the IMF staff and borrowing-country officials. Yet conditionality is not found to be more lenient when country officials share the normative orientations of the IMF staff. Staff concerns about time-inconsistent preferences and moral hazard likely weigh against more lenient treatment where normative adherence is stronger.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrip20
Additional Information:	© 2014 Taylor & Francis
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) J Political Science > JZ International relations
Date Deposited:	20 May 2014 13:56
Last Modified:	28 Nov 2024 06:12
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/56796

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