Multilateral development banks: financial constraints and counter-cyclical mandate

Over the last decades, and given their attractiveness as financing sources for developing countries, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have grown (in quantity and size) supported by their particular funding sources. Such resource dependence has not been sufficiently problematised in the MDB lite...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Molinari, Andrea, Patrucchi, Maria Leticia
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2020
Country:Argentina
Institution:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repository:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/142680
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/142680
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Multilateral Development Banks
Resource dependence
Conditionalities
Market risk
Development mandate
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/5.2
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/5
Description
Summary:Over the last decades, and given their attractiveness as financing sources for developing countries, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have grown (in quantity and size) supported by their particular funding sources. Such resource dependence has not been sufficiently problematised in the MDB literature, especially in terms of these organisations? credit exposure with their larger (middle-income) borrowing members. In this paper, we identify and characterise the three MDBs? funding sources that constitute their resource dependence: capital contributions, bond issuing leverage and borrower dynamics. Further, we analyse these sources for the International Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and African Development Bank. Finally, we deepen our analysis to look into two recent events: the risk swap implemented by these MDBs (in 2015) and the effect of Argentina´s selective default upon the IDB?s capital adequacy (2014-2015). We find that market leverage and borrower dynamics dimensions have grown in relevance, hence re-configuring a resource dependence that weakens MDB?s development mandate.