This paper raises several cautionary notes regarding high-conditionality lending by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the context of international debt crisis. It is argued that the role for high-conditionality lending is more restricted than generally believed, because...

This paper develops a cross-country statistical model of debt rescheduling, and the secondary market valuation of LDC debt, which links these variables to key structural characteristics of developing countries, such as the trade regime, the degree of income inequality, and the share of...

The major theme of this paper is that the commercial banks have weathered the debt crisis, while many debtor countries remain in economic paralysis or worse. There is a growing consensus that much of the LDC debt will not be fully serviced in the future, and that consensus is reflected in at...

Recent macroeconomic models of developing countries have emphasized the possibility of contactionary devaluations, stressing that domestic aggregate demand is likely to be reduced by the devaluations while aggregate supply may respond only slowly to the change in relative prices brought about by...

The effect on commercial banks of exposure to large amounts of developing country debt has been a topic of increasing concern in recent years. Fear of default on the part of the debtor countries has led to fears for the solvency of the creditor banks since in many cases the total of outstanding...

This paper presents a theoretical model to describe the effects of default risk on international lending to LDC sovereign borrowers. The threat of defaults in international lending is shown to give rise to many characteristics of the syndicated loan market: (1) quantity rationing of loans; (2)...

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...

Over the last decade, empirical studies analyzing macroeconomic conditions that may affect the size of government spending multipliers have flourished. Yet, in spite of their obvious public policy importance, little is known about public investment multipliers. In particular, the clear...

Using a new, large data set on quarterly reserve requirements for the period 1970-2011, this paper provides new evidence on the use of reserve requirements as a countercyclical macroprudential tool in developing countries. The appeal of reserve requirements lies in the pro-cyclical behavior of...

This paper documents a stylized fact not well appreciated in the literature. The Third World has been undergoing an emigration life cycle since the 1960s, and, except for Africa, emigration rates have been level or even declining since a peak in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The current...