Professional ties that bind: how normative orientations shape IMF conditionality

Staff play a key part in designing IMF conditionality, and yet the literature provides a narrow view of their motivations. This article shows how the design of IMF conditionality is linked to the normative orientations of the staff and their common professional training. Professional ties from similar training help to bind the staff together around a shared set of normative orientations that inform the IMF's policy goals. When borrowing-country officials do not share these orientations, the staff are motivated to tighten conditionality. This behaviour also fits with staff concerns about time-inconsistency and moral hazard. I find robust statistical support for this argument using a dataset based on the professional ties that exist between the IMF staff and borrowing-country officials. Yet conditionality is not found to be more lenient when country officials share the normative orientations of the IMF staff. Staff concerns about time-inconsistent preferences and moral hazard likely weigh against more lenient treatment where normative adherence is stronger.