The demand for IMF assistance: what factors influence the decision to turn to the Fund?

Under what circumstances do countries – or more precisely governments – decide to turn to the IMF for financial assistance? The answer might, at first glance, appear to be relatively straightforward. Surely they turn to the IMF when they are in an economic crisis and have nowhere else to go. They visit the IMF “doctor” when they are economically “ill,” for diagnosis, prescription, and medication. By taking the prescribed medicine they recover and, as a result, further visits to the “doctor” become unnecessary. According to this approach, all one has to do in order to come up with an explanation of the decision to turn to the Fund is provide a description of economic illness and the availability of alternative therapies, such as borrowing from elsewhere.