Byungwon Woo

Conditional on Conditionality: IMF Program Design and Foreign Direct Investment

The article explores how International Monetary Fund (IMF) program design influences foreign direct investment inflows. The author argues that stricter IMF conditionality signals a program-participating governments commitment to economic reforms, as it incurs larger ex ante political cost and risks greater ex post political cost. Thus, the catalytic effect of an IMF program is conditional on conditionality: programs with stricter conditions catalyze more foreign direct investment than those with less stringent conditions. Empirical analysis of the IMF conditionality dataset supports the argument and shows that after accounting for IMF program participation, the more structural conditions included in an IMF program, the more foreign direct investment flows into the country.

Unpacking Autocracy: Political Regimes and IMF Program Participation

Why do some countries participate in IMF programs while others refuse to do so? We suggest an answer to the question by unpacking one side of the typical democracy–autocracy dichotomy. Specifically, we utilize the growing literature on the varieties of authoritarianism to develop an argument linking the different incentives and constraints that leaders in party-based, personalist, and military regimes face when considering whether to sign agreements with the IMF. Empirically, we demonstrate that distinguishing among autocracies uncovers important variations in the sensitivity of such regimes to the political costs incurred by IMF participation. Party-based autocracies, for instance, respond to both sovereignty costs and the benefits of program participation during severe economic crises. Personalist regimes, however, are not sensitive to the sovereignty costs incurred with IMF participation and thus only participate when doing so provides needed revenue during economic crises. The unique features of military juntas, by contrast, suggests that such regimes are not sensitive to either of these political costs and thus do not respond to economic crises in the same way as their autocratic counterparts.

Smuggler’s Blues: Examining Why Countries Become Narcotics Transit States Using the New International Narcotics Production and Transit (INAPT) Data Set

We examine the global determinants of the illicit international narcotics trade and the specific roles that states play in it, a topic understudied by international relations scholars. We develop the first comprehensive global data set of state involvement in international narcotics trafficking and then use the data set to empirically test hypotheses concerning the likelihood of countries to serve as transit states for the transshipment of illicit drugs. We find that more-globalized countries are more likely to act as transit states and that the size of the economy, as well as state corruption and a weak rule of law, are positively related to the probability of acting as a transit state. States with a more stable political environment are also more likely to be transit states.

Structural Interdependence and Unobserved Heterogeneity in Event History Analysis

This chapter introduces how latent variables are handled in event history analysis, a popular method used to examine both the occurrence and the timing of events. We first emphasize why event history models are popular and what kinds of research questions the model can be used to answer. We also review the major estimation issues, briefly trace the development of event history models, and highlight the differences and similarities across various types of event history models. We then consider how latent variables are handled in event history analysis and demonstrate this with an example of latent variable analysis. In the conclusion we consider possible areas for future research.