aim is to account for both the economic variables that induce a country to ask
for an IMF loan (“demand-side”) and for the economic policy commitments the
Fund examines when decides to approve it or not (“supply-side”). Moreover, they
try also to incorporate, in their empirical model, a better speci...cation of the
“timing of the events”. They argue that economic policy measures, which could
provide a country with the Fund approval, are often taken before the arrangement
is actually accepted by the IMF. Then, the assumption that the initial date of
the programme is at the same time also the initial date of the policy measures’
adoption would be misleading.
More speci.cally, they obtain both bivariate and univariate probi t estimates
of the approval of an IMF arrangement, for a given country in a given year, using
a pooled sample of annual observations for 91 developing countries over 1973-’91.
In the bivariate model the two dependent variables are a country’s demand for
an IMF loan and a country’s meeting of the Fund criteria to supply the loan,
respectively. In the probit equation, instead, the dependent variable is the IMF
joint outcome of the two events. In the “demand side”, their estimatessuggestthat
lower level ofinternational reserves, of per capita GDP, of domestic investment and
higher values of the external debt service, movements in the real exchange rate, the
dummy indicating previ ous Fund arrangements are signi.cative determinants ofa
country’s interest in a Fund arrangement. Among the “supply factors”, they .nd
that policy measures to increase.scal revenue, to reduce government expenditure,
to tighten domestic credit and to adjust the exchange rate, positively a∏ect the
Fund approval of an arrangement.
2.2. Debt rescheduling
There are many papers dealing with the probability of the occurrence of a debt
rescheduling by an indebted country. Typically, in this literature, the occurrence
of a debt rescheduling is interpreted (and modelled) either simply as a rejection