"The silent revolution": how the staff exercise informal governance over IMF lending

his paper examines how the staff exercise informal governance over lending decisions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund). The essential component of designing any IMF program, assessing the extent to which a borrowing country is likely to fulfill its policy commitments, is based partly on informal staff judgments subject to informal incentives and normative orientations not dictated by formal rules and procedures. Moreover, when country officials are unable to commit to policy goals of the IMF, the IMF staff may bypass the formal channel of policy dialogue through informal contacts and negotiations with more like-minded actors outside the policymaking process. Exercising informal governance in these ways, the staff are motived by informal career advancement incentives and normative orientations associated with the organization’s culture to provide favorable treatment to borrowers composed of policy teams sympathetic toward their policy goals. The presence of these sympathetic interlocutors provides the staff both with greater confidence a lending program will achieve success and an opportunity to support officials who share their policy beliefs. I assess these arguments using a new dataset that proxies shared policy beliefs based on the professional characteristics of IMF staff and developing country officials. The evidence supports these arguments: larger loan commitments are extended to countries where government officials and the Fund staff share similar professional training. The analysis implies informal governance operates in IOs not just via state influence but also through the evolving makeup, incentive structure, and normative orientations of their staffs

A practitioner's guide to nudging

Supporting documentatio

Russia: The Long Road to Ratification. Internal Institution and Pressure Groups in the Kyoto Protocol’s Adoption Process

The Russian Federation played a crucial role in the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, after the US decision not to comply with the treaty, its ratification turned out to be indispensable for the Protocol to become legally binding. In early 2002, the Russian government decided to initiate the ratification process. However, notwithstanding this initial commitment, the country long hesitated to fulfil its promises, and for the last two years it sent numerous contradictory signals with respect to its position on climate policy. As a consequence, the factors that shape Russia’s behaviour in the context of climate negotiations received increasing attention. The main focus has been on the economic and international aspects motivating the Russian strategy. This paper attempts to complete this analysis by concentrating on a further feature that significantly contributed to Russia’s final decision, namely domestic forces. These factors have often been overlooked in the discussion of the Russian strategy. In order to fill this gap, this paper reconstructs the Russian ratification process, trying to identify the main domestic players and their role. Our findings provide various indications on the reasons of the recent developments in Russia, confirming the key role of the Russian President.Agreements, Climate, Incentives, Negotiations, Policy

Crime applications and social machines: crowdsourcing sensitive data

The authors explore some issues with the United Kingdom (U.K.) crime reporting and recording systems which currently produce Open Crime Data. The availability of Open Crime Data seems to create a potential data ecosystem which would encourage crowdsourcing, or the creation of social machines, in order to counter some of these issues. While such solutions are enticing, we suggest that in fact the theoretical solution brings to light fairly compelling problems, which highlight some limitations of crowdsourcing as a means of addressing Berners-Lee’s “social constraint.” The authors present a thought experiment – a Gendankenexperiment - in order to explore the implications, both good and bad, of a social machine in such a sensitive space and suggest a Web Science perspective to pick apart the ramifications of this thought experiment as a theoretical approach to the characterisation of social machine

What impact do questionnaire length and monetary incentives have on mailed health psychology survey response?

Objectives: Response rates to health-related surveys are declining. This study tested two strategies to improve the response rate to a health psychology survey mailed through English general practices: (1) sending a shortened questionnaire and (2) offering a monetary incentive to return a completed questionnaire. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Methods: Adults (n = 4,241) aged 45–59 years, from four General Practices in South-East England, were mailed a survey on attitudes towards bowel cancer screening. Using a 2 × 4 factorial design, participants were randomized to receive a ‘short’ (four A4 pages) or a ‘long’ (seven A4 pages) questionnaire, and one of four monetary incentives to return a completed questionnaire – (1) no monetary incentive, (2) £2.50 shop voucher, (3) £5.00 shop voucher, and (4) inclusion in a £250 shop voucher prize draw. Age, gender, and area-level deprivation were obtained from the General Practices. Results: The overall response rate was 41% (n = 1,589). Response to the ‘short’ questionnaire (42%) was not significantly different from the ‘long’ questionnaire (40%). The £2.50 incentive (43%) significantly improved response rates in univariate analyses, and remained significant after controlling for age, gender, area-level deprivation, and questionnaire length. The £5.00 (42%) and £250 prize draw (41%) incentives had no significant impact on response rates compared to no incentive (38%). Conclusions: A small monetary incentive (£2.50) may slightly increase response to a mailed health psychology survey. The length of the questionnaire (four pages vs. seven pages) did not influence response. Although frequently used, entry into a prize draw did not increase response. Achieving representative samples remains a challenge for health psychology

Bridging a gulf between environmental attitudes and behavior: Assessment of motivating factors for the youth in Qatar

To this day, there is a dearth of published research on environmental awareness, attitudes and behaviour in the Arabian Gulf, and there is no systematic data regarding the value people place on the environment. Understanding the operating social and political context, community values, and potential incentives in the face of environmental change is crucial for designing appropriate intervention measures and informing environmental policy of the region (Moran, 2010; Schultz & Kaiser, 2012). By narrowing the focus down to university-educated youth in Qatar, this paper aims to bridge the gap between reported environmental attitudes and actual behaviour by evaluating different factors that could motivate the younger generation to become more involved in Qatar’s environmental conservation efforts and lead to a more sustainable social and economic growth. Ajzen’s (1991) Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is employed as the main conceptual framework, hypothesising attitudes, perceived behavioural control and social norms as predictive of pro-environmental behaviour. For the purposes of this study, the model was expanded to consider childhood activities in nature, education, and proximity to an environmental issue as additional factors that are deemed relevant for predicting pro-environmental behaviour. To test the hypothesised correlation between the different factors and environmental behaviour, a close-ended questionnaire was administered to 299 Qatar University undergraduate students in May 2016, with series of questions regarding their time spent in nature, environmental attitudes, social pressure to behave pro-environmentally and whether they feel in control over their actions. Statistical analyses of the gathered data revealed partial applicability of the theoretical model for understanding environmental behaviour, with several factors of the original TPB model (namely attitudes, positive social norms and internal locus of control) as well as supplementary factors (childhood time in nature and university-level education) emerging as significant predictors of pro-environmental behaviour. In addition, analysis of open-ended questions revealed religion and governmental incentives as additional factors that have the potential to motivate students into more pro-environmental behaviour. A general lack of awareness was reported by the respondents, who often blamed ignorance for people’s unwillingness to act more pro-environmentally in their daily lives. Although the respondents held overwhelmingly proenvironmental attitudes, their willingness to engage in pro-environmental behaviour was not as evident, due to several factors at play. The paper concludes by suggesting ways how those factors can be utilised to help shape the environmental behaviour of younger generations; however, it also warns that only by bridging the gulf between academic research and policy-making can the gulf between stated environmental values and actual behaviour be truly overpassed

Social values and the corruption argument against financial incentives for healthy behaviour

Footnotes Funding This research was funded by the Centre for the Study of Incentives in Health, from a strategic award from the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Programme (PI Marteau: 086031/Z/08/Z).Peer reviewedPublisher PD