The past decade has witnessed an explosion in the number of regional trade agreements. There seems to be a general, if ill-defined, belief on the part of many policymakers and academics that there is more to such agreements than the traditional gains from trade (thus the term"new regionalism")....

Using a model that distinguishes between large money center banks and smaller regional banks, this paper shows that the percentage of a country's debt held by the large banks affects the secondary market price of that country's debt: the higher the concentration of the debt, the higher the...

The troublesome debts of many developing countries have spawned much literature on why countries borrow, on what debt contributes to growth, on why countries repay, and on how to deal with existing debt. The author provides an analytical primer on the following aspects of sovereign debt : 1) the...

The Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative has identified the cycle of debt rescheduling and restructurings of many of the poorest countries as a serious development problem. It has mobilized the lender community to restructure loans with the aim of generating debt sustainability: the...