This paper examines the question of how the path of real GDP in four important Latin American countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, might have differed if the sharp run-up in borrowing during the late 1970s and early 1980s had not occurred. Specifically, we ask whether these countries...

This paper isolates the common themes and policy recommendations found in the capital flight literature, and evaluates their statistical, conceptual, and empirical foundations. We find that there is no basis for presuming a stable link between any measure of capital flight and a nation's growth...

This paper discusses the problems of international debt from the point of the of the evolution of U.S. policy. The first section presents a brief historical review of the international debt problems of the 1980s. The next section examines the situation as of early 1989: progress as well as...

This paper addresses a phenomenon often noted in association with programs aimed at stabilizing high rates of inflation: a rise in the ex post real interest rate following implementation of the disinflation strategy. Such increases have been observed in connection with the stopping of European...

This paper considers how exchange controls, black markets, and forward-looking expectations condition the impact of exchange rate devaluations in developing countries. A model incorporating these features is developed to analyze the response of key external balance indicators to anticipated...

An analytic and accounting framework is presented for examining the evolution of the external positions of eight developing countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Korea, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and Venezuela. The framework is used to analyze the historical paths of external debts in these...

Interest in income and price elasticities for international trade has increased recently because of the debt crisis that many developing countries are experiencing. Estimates of income elasticities of import demand, however, range from a low of 1.3 to a high of 4.7. Such differences have...

This paper is a general discussion of debt conversions in heavily indebted developing countries. The paper first describes the three different types of transactions that are commonly called debt conversions. Next the paper discusses programs that have been established in Chile, Brazil, Mexico,...

During the early 1980s, many less developed countries (LDCs) experienced a phenomenon which is not readily explicable using conventional macroeconomic theory: accelerating inflation coupled with output contraction. Moreover, arguments based on supply shocks do not adequately explain the...

There is now a large literature which attributes the investment decline in heavily indebted developing countries to the effects of the international debt crisis which began in 1982. However, these theories have not been tested against the alternative that declining terms of trade and high world...