This empirical study finds that while debt reduction and policy reforms in debtor countries have been important determinants of renewed access to international capital markets, changes in international interest rates have been the dominant factor. We calculate the effects of changes in...

The stock of sovereign debt is typically measured at face value. This is a misleading indicator when debts are issued with different contractual forms. In this paper we construct a new measure of the stock of external sovereign debt for 100 developing countries from 1979 to 2006 that is...

A new aggregation scheme used to measure the sources of fiscal financing of indebted countries suggests that there was a fundamental improvement in the seniority of domestic debt at the expense of foreign bank debt during the late 1980s. We argue that this was the revenue maximizing response of...

In this paper, we propose a tractable variant of the open economy neoclassical growth model that emphasizes political economy and contracting frictions. The political economy frictions involve disagreement and political turnover, while the contracting friction is a lack of commitment regarding...

With the rapid increase in LDC indebtedness in the recent decade, the issues of creditworthiness and country risk have gained new importance. This paper offers a theoretical and historical analysis of international capital markets in the presence of default risk. The theoretical model suggests...

This paper examines the tradeoffs facing creditors of a country whose debt is large enough that the country cannot attract voluntary new lending. If the country is unable to meet its debt service requirements out of current income, the creditors have two choices. They can finance the country,...