It is helpful to know what the IMF’s current view of the role of conditionality in its programmes: the statement is here.
Additional material:
The Independent Evaluation Office provides critiques of various aspects of IMF work:
There is a query page to see who borrowed what and when from IMF:
In his recent Richard H. Sabot Lecture, Ken Rogoff addresses the question of whether the IMF is guilty of imposing excessive austerity as part of a bailout. The paper is here. A summary quote:
I will argue that the simplest and perhaps most cutting version of the IMF austerity charges is simply confused. IMF loans typically relieve austerity; they do not make it worse. IMF support helps a country engage in less procyclical budget contraction than it might have been forced to do otherwise. That said, the IMF’s judgments in calibrating programs involve a huge range of subjective decisions about politics, psychology, and economics, judgments that are difficult to get “right” consistently. Toward the end of my remarks, I will argue that in many respects, the greatest problem with IMF programs is not excessive austerity with debtors but excessive generosity toward creditors.
The FT carries an article which highlights that some (unnamed) officials elsewhere in Europe think that raising the corporate tax rate should be part of the deal. One quote
The new issue of The Economist has a long analysis piece on Ireland: you can read it here.
Was it a mistake for the Irish government to use a clever ploy to “park” Nama bonds at the ECB? Was it the non-standard use of the ECB’s temporary liquidity facility as a source of long-term bank sector funding that led the ECB this week to demand an Irish debt restructuring? Or should the ECB have accepted that they needed to provide long-term risk capital to the Irish banking sector in this non-standard way, as part of their role as euro-area lender of last resort?