L'expérience des années 1980 a montré que la "re-solvabilisation" d'un pays surendetté et en cessation de paiements impose souvent une réduction de dette importante. Tel a été le résultat principal des plans Brady négociés par près d'une vingtaine de pays depuis 1989 : des réductions...

L’Argentine a mené entre 1991 et 2001 une des expériences de currency board les plus remarquables de la période moderne. Comment rendre compte de cette expérience, prise dans son ensemble ? Qu’apprend-elle sur les avantages et les inconvénients des currency board ? Comment expliquer son...

Since the early 1997 paper by La Porta et al., a growing body of research has argued that ‘legal origins’ have a country-specific, time-invariant effect on property rights and economic development. Following the methodology of La Porta et al., an original database of 51 bankruptcy laws has...

The process of development is linked to the rise of an integrated and competitive economy and polity that allow a maximal division of labor and innovation. This process relies on two intertwined dynamics. First, in the establishment of the rule of law, legal instruments are appropriated by those...

Over the last fifteen years the trade negotiations agenda has come to include more and non-border issues, and on several occasions the first step has been to obtain a consensus between the involved parties as to its contents and scope. This broadening of the trade agenda has pushed political and...

This contribution first presents a brief outline of the economic logic of bankruptcy laws as of their historical development in Europe since the Middle-Ages. This experience is then compared with what an economy without a bankruptcy law would like, and three specific, intermediary examples are...

Coordination of cross-border bankruptcies between 1870 and World War II offers a puzzling image. On the one hand, diplomats, academic lawyers, and private lobbies repeatedly tried to bring regulations closer to the ideal of unity and universality of proceedings: all parties and assets should be...

La chose est connue : depuis des siècles, les Etats se mettent en défaut de paiement sur leur dette. Charles Quint en 1559 en est un exemple classique mais la monarchie française a vécu sous la menace d’une banqueroute pendant au moins cent cinquante ans, jusqu’à la Révolution. De...

A l'heure où les comparaisons avec la crise des années trente vont bon train, il n'est pas inutile de revenir sur la situation des pays asiatiques, qui ont les premiers subi la vague d'instabilité actuelle. L'enchaînement des événements qui les ont entrainé dans la récession est...

Just as medieval municipal republics surrendered to national sovereigns in the past, incumbent states may be replaced in the future by an alternate, global public order. Citizens and merchants would obtain more equal rights, better market infrastructures, and a more efficient provision of public...