The paper investigates the relationship between external debt and economic growth, focusing on the role played by the policy and institutional framework. Results for a panel of 114 developing countries show that the debt-growth nexus depends on institutions and policies. The Debt-Laffer curve...

This paper investigates the relationship between external indebtedness and economic growth, with a particular attention to LICs, for which the theoretical arguments of debt overhang and liquidity constraint have to be reconsidered. The estimation of a growth model, with a panel of 121 developing...

The global crisis and the expansionary government reaction in many countries has revamped the attention of policy makers and academics on the growth effects of large public debts. Recent empirical studies investigate the impact of public debt on growth in advanced and emerging countries. This...

In the wake of the global crisis the International Monetary Fund (IMF) increased its exposure to low-and middle-income countries and boosted the overhaul of its lending approach to enhance its role in preventing crises. This paper tests whether IMF lending has targeted countries most affected by...

Microsavings contribute to smooth consumption, cope with emergencies and increase the welfare of poor households. We use data from an original survey administered to a sample of Bangladeshi women, all members of a small microfinance institution (MFI), to analyze the individual socio-economic...

Dealing with one exogenous adverse external shock at a time is generally a difficult challenge for heavily indebted poor countries, because of limited fiscal space, few policy options and scarce debt management capacity. The current financial crisis, because of its unprecedented severity and...

The paper investigates the relationship between external debt and economic growth, focusing on the role played by the policy and institutional framework. Results for a panel of 114 developing countries show that the debt-growth nexus depends on institutions and policies. The Debt-Laffer curve...

The World Bank and the IMF have adopted a debt sustainability framework (DSF) to evaluate the risk of debt distress in Low Income Countries (LICs). At the core of the DSF are empirically-based thresholds for each of five different measures of the debt burden (the “debt threshold approach”...

This paper looks at the effects of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programs on banking crises in a large sample of developing countries, over the period 1970-2010. The endogeneity of the IMF intervention is addressed by adopting an instrumental variable strategy and a propensity score...

This paper presents an assessment of the external debt literature related to the IMF-World Bank HIPC Initiative and proposes to extend the present debt sustainability framework. We argue that a comprehensive debt sustainability analysis requires a fully-fledged government budget constraint,...