Steven Phillips

Does IMF Financing Result in Moral Hazard

The view that the IMF`s financial support gives rise to moral hazard has become increasingly prominent in policy discussions, particularly following the 1995 Mexican crisis. This paper seeks to clarify a number of conceptual issues and bring some basic empirical evidence to bear on this hypothesis. While some element of moral hazard is a logical consequence of the IMF`s financial support, such moral hazard is difficult to detect in market reactions to various IMF policy announcements and there is no evidence that such moral hazard has recently been on the rise.

Managing financial crises: the experience in East Asia

The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 was one of the most dramatic economic events of recent times, which raised many questions regarding the appropriate policy response to financial crises. This paper reviews the experience of this crisis, focusing on the overall strategy of crisis management and the way that strategy was implemented, including with regard to official and private financing, structural reforms, and monetary and fiscal policies.

Inflation, Disinflation, and Growth

Although few would doubt that very high inflation is bad for growth, there is much less agreement about moderate inflation’s effects. Using panel regressions and a nonlinear specification, this paper finds a statistically and economically significant negative relationship between inflation and growth. This relationship holds at all but the lowest inflation rates and is robust across various samples and specifications. The method of binary recursive trees identifies inflation as one the most important statistical determinants of growth. Finally, while there are short-run growth costs of disinflation, these are only relevant for the most severe disinflations, or when the initial inflation rate is well within the single-digit range.

IMF-Supported Programs in Indonesia, Korea and Thailand

This paper is a preliminary review of the design of and early experience with IMF-supported programs in Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand during 1997-98. The review takes into account developments as of October 1998, and was the basis for a discussion of the programs by the IMFs Executive Board in December 1998.

The External Balance Assessment (EBA) Methodology

The External Balance Assessment (EBA) methodology has been developed by the IMF’s Research Department as a successor to the CGER methodology for assessing current accounts and exchange rates in a multilaterally consistent manner. Compared to other approaches, EBA emphasizes distinguishing between the positive empirical analysis and the normative assessment of current accounts and exchange rates, and highlights the roles of policies and policy distortions. This paper provides a comprehensive description and discussion of the 2013 version (“2.0”) of the EBA methodology, including areas for its further development.

Moral Hazard: Does IMF Financing Encourage Imprudence by Borrowers and Lenders?

Examines the issue of moral hazard inrelation to IMF loans to countries in financial difficulties. Concerns about moral hazard have had a prominent place in recent discussions on how the architecture of the international financial system should be reformed and what the IMF’s role should be.