What happens to social spending in IMF-supported programmes?

Benedict Clements, Sanjeev Gupta and Masahiro Nozaki

Applied Economics, 2013, vol. 45, issue 28, 4022-4033

Abstract: This article finds that education and health spending has risen during International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supported programmes at a faster pace than in developing countries as a whole. The analysis is based on the most comprehensive dataset assembled thus far for this purpose, with data covering 1985 to 2009 for 140 countries. Controlling for other determinants of education and health spending, including macroeconomic conditions, the results confirm that IMF-supported programmes have a positive and significant effect on social spending in low-income countries. Over a 5-year period with IMF-supported programmes, spending for education increases by about ¾ percentage point of Gross Domestic Product (GDP); and for health, by about 1 percentage point of GDP. IMF-supported programmes are also associated with increases in the share of government spending allocated to education and health.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2012.744136 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:45:y:2013:i:28:p:4022-4033

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2012.744136

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().