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With the end of the Cold War, the International Monetary Fund emerged as the most powerful international institution in history. But how much influence can the IMF exert over fiercely contested issues in domestic politics that affect the lives of millions? In "Lending Credibility", Randall Stone develops a systematic approach to answering this question. Focusing on the former Soviet bloc, Stone finds that the IMF is neither as powerful as some critics fear, nor as weak as others believe, but that the answer hinges on the complex factor of how much credibility it can muster from country to country. Stone begins by building a formal, game-theoretic model on lending credibility, which he then subjects to sophisticated quantitive testing on original data from 26 countries over the 1990s and interview-based case studies on negoitations between the IMF and Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Bulgaria. Stone asserts that the IMF has exerted startling influence over economic policy in smaller countires, such as Poland and Bulgaria. However, where US foreign policy interests come more heavily into play, as in Russia, the IMF cannot credibly commit to enforcing the loans-for-policy contract. This er