The authors present a dynamic model of international lending in whi ch borrowers cannot commit to future repayments and debtors can sometime s successfully negotiate partial defaults or "rescheduling agreements." All parties in a debt rescheduling negotiation realize that today's rescheduling...

Troubled debtor countries do not gain by repurchasing external bank debt at market discount, even if a buyback would stimulate investment by relieving debt overhang. The reason is that buybacks allow creditors to reap more than 100 percent of any efficiency gains that might result from increased...

A dynamic bargaining-theoretic framework is used to analyze multilateral negotiations for rescheduling sovereign debt. The analysis illustrates how various factors, such as the debtor's gains from trade and the level of world interest rates, affect the relative bargaining power of various...

This paper shows that, under fairly general conditions, lending to small countries must be supported by the direct sanctions available to creditors and cannot be supported by a country's "reputation for repayment." This distinction is critically important for understanding the true underlying...