22,530 research outputs found
Do the IMF and the World Bank Influence Voting in the UN General Assembly?
No full textISSN:0048-5829ISSN:1573-7101ISSN:1573-710
Tracking and Incentives. A comment on Hanushek and Woessmann
No full texttracking, selection, educational policy, tracking, selection
Global horse trading: IMF loans for votes in the United Nations Security Council
No full textWe investigate whether temporary members of the United Nations Security Council receive favorable treatment from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) using panel data for 197 countries over the period from 1951 to 2004. Our results indicate a robust positive relationship between temporary Security Council membership and participation in IMF programs, even after accounting for economic, political, and country-specific factors. There is also evidence that Security Council membership reduces the number of conditions included in IMF programs. IMF loans seem to be a mechanism by which the major shareholders of the Fund can win favor with voting members of the Security Council. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
An Analysis of Political and Institutional Power Dispersion: The Case of Turkey
No full textThis study examines the effects of fragmented governments and fiscal authorities on budget deficits in Turkey along with political business cycle effects. For econometric analysis we will use annual data from the period of 1960-2009. This paper sheds light on various dispersion indices and their use in the field of political power and fiscal performance. The results show that the power dispersion indices of governments and fiscal institutions significantly explain the increases in the ratio of budget deficit to GNP. The paper draws attention to the unification and better coordination of fiscal authorities in Turkey. The analysis has important policy implications for Turkey and other developing countries from the viewpoint of fragmented political and administrative dispersion of power and poor budget performances.Political Business Cycles, Fragmentation and Power Dispersion, Public Budget, Turkey, Statistical Indices
Politics and IMF Conditionality
No full textBailouts sponsored by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are famous for their conditionality: in return for continued installments of desperately needed loans, governments must comply with austere policy changes. Many have suggested, however, that politically important countries face rather weak stringency. Obstacles to testing this hypothesis include finding a measure of political importance that is not plagued by endogeneity and obtaining data on IMF conditionality. We propose to measure political importance using temporary membership on the UN Security Council and analyze a newly available data set on the level of conditionality attached to (a maximum of) 314 IMF arrangements with 101 countries over the 1992-2008 period. We find a negative relationship: Security Council members receive about 30 percent fewer conditions. This suggests that the major shareholders of the IMF trade softer conditionality in return for political influence over the Security Council
An Analysis of Political and Institutional Power Dispersion: The Case of Turkey
No full textThis study examines the effects of fragmented governments and fiscal authorities on budget deficits in Turkey along with political business cycle effects. For econometric analysis we will use annual data from the period of 1960-2009. This paper sheds light on various dispersion indices and their use in the field of political power and fiscal performance. The results show that the power dispersion indices of governments and fiscal institutions significantly explain the increases in the ratio of budget deficit to GNP. The paper draws attention to the unification and better coordination of fiscal authorities in Turkey. The analysis has important policy implications for Turkey and other developing countries from the viewpoint of fragmented political and administrative dispersion of power and poor budget performances.Political Business Cycles, Fragmentation and Power Dispersion, Public Budget, Turkey, Statistical Indices
Peaks and troughs: economics and political economy of central bank independence cycles
No full textDavid Ricardo’s ideas represent, nowadays, a closer representation of the functioning of monetary policy institutions than ever before in history. Central bankers can implement their policies with a degree of autonomy that their predecessors would have only dreamed of. Yet, the history of central banks is rich in modifications to their role and functions (Goodhart, 1988; Lastra, 1996; Goodhart, 2011). In particular, over the past four decades, central banks around the world have seen their mandates progressively narrowed and zoomed on the goal of price stability
No Need to Run Millions of Regressions
No full textWe argue that in modelling cross-country growth models one should first identify so-called outlying observations. For the data set of Sala-i-Martin, we use the least median of squares (LMS) estimator to identify outliers. As LMS is not suited for inference, we then use reweighted least squares (RLS) for our cross-country growth models. We identify 27 variables that are significantly related to economic growth. Subsequently, applying Sala-i-Martin's approach for the data set without outliers hardly reveals any additional information. Variables that are insignificant according to the RLS method are generally not significantly related to economic growth under the Sala-i-Martin approach.Sensitivity analysis, outliers, economic growth
When is a central bank governor replaced? Evidence based on a new data set
No full textUsing new data on the term in office of central bank governors for a large set of countries for 1970-2005, we estimate a model for the probability that a central bank governor is replaced before the end of his legal term in office. We formulate hypotheses based on the literature on the determinants of central bank independence that are tested using conditional logit models and the robustness approach of Sala-i-Martin (1997). We conclude that, apart from the share of the legal term in office that has elapsed, political and regime instability, the occurrence of elections, and the ratio of private credit to GDP increase the probability of a turnover. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Inc
Determinants of Long-term Growth: New Results Applying Roboust Estimation and Extreme Bounds
No full textsensitivity analysis, outliers, economic growth, robust estimation
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