Does being an IMF executive board member (Re)pay? An examination of IMF loans and repayments

This paper analyses the political economy of IMF loans and repayments using data from 99 countries over the period 1984–2014. We bring two contributions to the literature, analysing: (i) the impact of the presence of a country on the IMF Executive Board and (ii) repayment behaviour (and not only loan requests). We show evidence that loans from, and repayments to, the IMF are influenced by the presence of countries on the IMF Executive Board. In particular, the results indicate that a position on the Board increases the loan amount by approximately 0.5 points and the repayment amount by approximately 0.2 points.