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The Greek and Icelandic IMF programmes compared

Katsimi, Margarita, Zoega, Gylfi, (2015), “The Greek and Icelandic IMF programmes compared”, Voxeu, 19 Νοεμβρίου.

Iceland and Greece were both seriously affected by the Global Crisis, yet their experiences with the implemented IMF programmes have been quite different. In Iceland the programme has been a success, whereas the one in Greece has been a failure. This column explains why this happened. First, Iceland’s external debt was de jure private, while Greece’s external debt was sovereign debt. Second, Iceland has its own currency, making it easy to create a current account surplus through a lower exchange rate. Finally, the government of Iceland took full ownership of the IMF programme, which was not the case in Greece.

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