Starting with the international debt crisis in the early 1980s the volume of international barter trade increased substantially. This paper examines how barter can help highly indebted countries to finance imports if they cannot use standard credit arrangements. We argue that payment in goods is...

Mandated countertrade is a policy to restrict unilateral imports. A country's government thereby in effect commits domestic firms not to purchase from a foreign trading partner unless there are reciprocal sales. We argue that the policy may be a rational response to fundamental contracting...