This paper focuses on Uganda’s 2013 Article IV Consultation and Sixth Review Under the Policy Support Instrument, Request for a Three-Year Policy Support Instrument and cancellation of Current Policy Support Instrument. Driven mainly by investment and trade, growth has recovered to about...

Interest rates fell sharply after Mexico's Brady deal, and private investment and growth recovered. We show, econometrically, that debt relief influenced the macroeconomy mostly though its favourable impact on uncertainty. While the impact of the <MI>variability<D> of the future net transfer is...</d></mi>

We investigate the determinants of capital flight from 30 sub-Saharan African countries, including 24 countries classified as severely indebted low-income countries, for the period 1970-1996. The econometric analysis reveals that external borrowing is positively and significantly related to...

The authors revisit the debt overhang question. They first use nonparametric techniques to isolate a panel of countries on the downward sloping section of a debt Laffer Curve. In particular, overhang countries are ones where a threshold level of debt is reached in sample, beyond which (initial)...

This paper traces the origins of World Bank indicators of debt distress and their employment as HIPC sustainability targets. These targets are interpreted as ‘switching values’, below which countries are (on average) expected to avoid debt service problems, but as such, they do not take into...

Most young households simultaneously hold both unsecured debt on which they pay an average of 10 percent interest and social security wealth on which they earn less than 2 percent. We document this fact using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We then consider a life-cycle model with...

We examine both grants and net loans made to low income countries during the last two decades to understand the main reasons that motivated the behaviour of both donors and creditors. Our results point to an overall "mixed" evidence, concerning the hypotheses of defensive lending (and defensive...

This paper examines economic rationale and efficiency effects of proposals directed at alleviating debt problems of poor countries. Key to the investigation is determination of whether proposed mechanisms tackle fundamental causes of the debt crisis. The paper finds that despite the enthusiasm...

On the basis of models I developed to simulate mathematical relationships between external debt and fiscal and balance of payments variables my thesis evaluates whether debt cancellation will overcome the debt overhang and crowding out effects of external debt and allow Severely Indebted Low...