The quadrupling of oil prices since the end of 1973 was accompanied by a rapid increase in the borrowings of developing countries. A global view of their external debt situation reveals some alarming realities.

At the end of 1982 South Korea had foreign debts of US $ 38 billion, the third highest total for a developing country after those of Mexico and Brazil. In contrast to these countries, however, South Korea has avoided debt crises so far. In view of the 20 or more rescheduling operations carried...

The debt crisis that has been rumbling for many years repeatedly necessitates fresh rescheduling negotiations. These debt rescheduling conferences bring together two fundamentally different partles: on the one side are the emissaries from the big international banks and on the other the...

The debt crisis of the developing countries, which loomed so large at the beginning of the eighties, appears for the time being to have been overcome. However, under the surface problems are growing that could give a debt crisis among the developing countries an entirely new dimension. Under...

In search of solutions to the international debt crisis, attention has recently been focused on a new financing technique, so-called debt-equity swaps. An essential difference between these and the usual swapping of debt into equity is that the former allow a wider range of applications. The...

The concept of Retroactive Terms Adjustment (RTA) emerged as a response to the urgent need for international action on the debt problems of the developing countries. The following article analyses the concept and the contribution RTA has made towards solving the debt problem.

The disappointing response to the Mexican debt-swap initiative has shown that financial innovations cannot be relied on solely to reduce the debt burden to levels that reestablish the creditworthiness of major debtors. The following article examines the conventional approach to solving the debt...

Finaciial innovations are viewed almost universally as a new dimension in international debt management. The following article analyses the direct and indirect effects of using various types of new financial instrument to ease the debt burden. It considers the question whether new forms of...