Capital flows to developing countries are small and take mostly the form of loans rather than direct foreign investment. We build a simple model of North-South capital flows that highlights the interplay between diminishing returns, production risk and sovereign risk. This model generates a set...

The authors reexamine a classic question in international economics: What is the current account response to a transitory income shock such as a temporary improvement in the terms of trade, a transfer from abroad, or unusually high production? To answer this question, they construct a world...

This paper examines the determinants of"debt distress,"which they define as periods in which countries resort to exceptional finance in any of three forms: (1) significant arrears on external debt, (2) Paris Club rescheduling, and (3) nonconcessional International Monetary Fund lending. Using...

Several recent papers have attempted to identify the partial effects of trade integration and institutional quality on long-run growth using the geographical determinants of trade and the historical determinants of institutions as instruments. The authors show that many of the specifications in...

Drawing on evidence from a large sample of speculative attacks in industrial and developing countries, the author argues that high interest rates do not defend currencies against speculative attacks. In fact, there is a striking lack of any systematic association between interest rates and the...

The evidence from individual cases and from cross-country analysis supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries. To determine the effect of globalization on growth, poverty, and inequality, the authors first identify a group of developing...

A look at the data reveals that in OECD countries, economic fluctuations exhibit a high degree of synchronization. In 1965-90, cross-country contemporaneous GDP growth correlations averaged 45 percent. This suggests that a central element of any theory of economic fluctuations should be an...

The authors use data from more than 6,000 World Bank projects evaluated between 1983 and 2009 to investigate macro and micro correlates of project outcomes. They find that country-level"macro"measures of the quality of policies and institutions are very strongly correlated with project outcomes,...

Multilateral development banks are frequently accused of"defensive lending,"the practice of extending new loans purely in order to ensure that existing loans are repaid. This paper empirically examine this hypothesis using data on lending by and repayments to the International Development...

The authors use preliminary results from an ongoing effort to construct estimates of debt relief to study its allocation across a sample of 62 low-income countries. They find some evidence that debt relief, particularly from multilateral creditors, has been allocated to countries with better...