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The twenty-one contributions in this book assess the controversy surrounding the Fund and provide judgments about the criteria for Fund lending which should help readers understand and analyze both its ongoing role in smoothing adjustment to international payments imbalances and its currently critical position in responding to the debt crisis.

IMF conditionality has been severely criticised by developing countries, who accuse the Fund of unjustly provoking political turmoil and causing poverty. This refers to the policies that a member country is required to follow in order to be able to use the Fund's resources. Conditionality is legally based on the requirement to adopt `adequate safeguards' for the use of resources as stipulated by the IMF's Articles of Agreement. This work focuses on legal implications and policy aspects and, more specifically, on the question of how far-reaching the requirement of `adequate safeguards' may be. Furthermore, the author demonstrates that conditionality is also affected by cooperative arrangements with other institutions, such as the World Bank and United Nations. A major conclusion is that there should be improvements in cooperation and in the monitoring of the application of Fund law on conditionality. Scholars and students who take a deep interest in international economic relations will find this book a unique opportunity to study the legal framework of conditionality. Government officials preparing for negotiations with the Fund will also benefit from reading this work.

Structural conditionality of IMF-supported programs is designed to support structural reforms by countries borrowing from the IMF. Taking stock of program conditions and their implementation, this paper finds that conditionality focuses on fiscal, monetary and financial issues—areas where IMF expertise is strong—and shies away from structural areas such as labor or product market reforms. Hence, tackling deep-rooted structural issues during IMF-supported programs often remained elusive. To ensure countries gain most from IMF conditionality, the paper outlines an evaluation matrix for prioritizing and designing structural reforms, and applies it to case studies.