The Catalytic Effect of IMF Lending: Evidence from Sectoral FDI Data

Country partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is ideally rare and short in duration. States turn to the IMF in times of economic crisis, which usually involve some combination of increasing national debt, balance of payments problems, and dwindling foreign reserves. The conditional loans provided by the IMF serve as a temporary solution to balance of payments issues, providing a capital influx in exchange for various policy shifts designed to bring about macroeconomic stabilization. The IMF has always viewed its loans as a stopgap measure; normally only a portion of the capital flows necessary to correct a deficit are lent to countries in crisis. The rest is expected to come from private capital markets. Indeed, the entire rationale for IMF lending rests on a conundrum: private capital is unwilling to finance a current account deficit, yet the IMF’s involvement is supposed to be a signal for private capital flows to resume.