While past discussions on EMU tended to emphasise its role in limiting the impact of the global financial crisis on the euro area countries, the focus has now shifted to the destabilising effects threatening the entire euro zone as a consequence of the dire fiscal situation in some weaker member...

The burden of past restructuring of the external debt of developing countries has been distributed asymmetrically among creditors owing to the lack of incentives for voluntary debt reduction. "New creditors" have been deterred from lending voluntarily because their claims would inevitably be...

The Brady Plan is the first official proposal to give priority to a tangible reduction in the debtor countries' debt service burden and is thus a milestone along the path towards overcoming the international debt crisis. However, the instruments foreseen in the Plan virtually invite criticism...