Are economic adjustment programmes implemented and are they resilient? An answer with the ‘ENAP’: a data base on EcoNomic Adjustment Policies in five Eurozone countries (2007–2020)

Abstract

Between 2010 and 2019, five Eurozone governments in economic difficulty received assistance from international lenders on condition that certain policies specified in the Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) were implemented. To what extent were those conditions implemented? After conditionality, to what extent have governments rolled back changes pursued under external constraint? Do we find variation across governments regarding implementation and reversals, and if so, why?. This paper presents a database allowing the answers to those questions, the Data Base on EcoNomic Adjustment Policies (ENAP) database. We codified all policies and reforms included in the MoU’s, and whether those were subsequently fully or partially implemented. We also codified all decisions taken by bailed out countries since the beginning of the financial crisis and verified whether those had been kept or fully or partially reversed until December 2019. For each condition or policy, a series of explanatory variables were coded: policy sector, type of reform, timing and type of reversal, origin of reversal and number of veto players. The ENAP shows that in all countries, MoU’s were largely implemented and are resilient.