The replacement of national currencies by a common currency in the EMU causes a monetary externality if the European Central Bank is inclined to monetize part of outstanding government debt in the community.High government debt in one part of the EU then increases the common inflation rate.We...

We examine both grants and net loans made to low income countries during the last two decades to understand the main reasons that motivated the behaviour of both donors and creditors. We find that the total amount of transfers to HIPCs, as compared to non-HIPCs, have been increasing with their...

One of the goals of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt initiative is to provide additional resources for basic health care to the population of eligible developing countries. In this paper I investigate the effect of debt relief on per capita health expenditure in a sample of...

The purpose of the paper is twofold. First, I investigate whether numerous debt initiatives during the 1980s and 1990s have had a significant effect on economic growth rates in developing countries in general. The major initiatives during that time period were negotiated as bilateral agreements...

We examine international fiscal coordination in a world where markets are integrated but national governments are sovereign. Consequences of the liberalization of the capital market on national fiscal policies and possible remedies to resulting ine¢ciencies are analyzed. A simple model, with N...

The paper discusses and revisits some of the most popular stories behind the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, i.e. the prolonged overvaluation of the peso owing to the Currency Board arrangement, the lack of fiscal adjustment, and the negative external environment which triggered a “sudden...

In this paper I investigate the effects of recent debt relief initiatives such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt Initiative of 1996 on resource flows to developing countries. Focusing on a sample of low-income countries, I concentrate on the following questions. First, is the...