The history of debt relief goes back several decades. It reveals that a country's accumulation of unsustainable debt stems from such factors as deficiencies in macroeconomic management, adverse terms-of-trade shocks, and poor governance. Debt-relief initiatives have provided debt-burdened...

The financial crisis of 2008 has rekindled interest in sovereign debt crises among policy makers and scholars. History shows that lending booms typically end in busts, with the beneficiaries of debt in the upswing often forced to default or reschedule their debts in the downswing (Sturzenegger...

Heavily indebted low-income countries benefited from significant debt relief over the past decade. Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), assistance of about $117 billion in nominal terms had been committed to 35 HIPC as of...