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...

This paper estimates the likely consequences of the financial crisis on aid budgets. It uses two different approaches. First, past financial crises are used to compare aid budgets between countries where a crisis broke out and those where it did not. It is shown that a financial crisis not only...

This policy essay, written as a UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) Working Paper, reflects on the social factors underlying Pakistan's chronic debt crises, their resolution, and potential paths to future prevention. It stresses the need for a debtors' perspective...

The strong interdependence between the developed and developing worlds surfaced with the recent economic downturn. Due to the global character of the economy, the downturn affected not only the North but also the South. In addition, the Official Development Assistance (ODA) is subject to a...

Developing countries are the least to blame for the outbreak of the financial crisis, but they are destined to suffer the most dramatic and long-lasting consequences. This chapter focuses on the early responses of the International Monetary Fund to the present crisis in low- and middle-income...

Official (government-to-government) lending is much larger than commonly known, often surpassing total private cross-border capital flows, especially during disasters such as wars, financial crises and natural catastrophes. We assemble the first comprehensive long-run dataset of official...

Official (government-to-government) lending is much larger than commonly known, often surpassing total private cross-border capital flows, especially during disasters such as wars, financial crises and natural catastrophes. We assemble the first comprehensive long-run dataset of official...

In many theoretical models of debt crises, the operative trigger for the run on sovereign debt is a shortage of the liquidity reserves necessary to finance short-term debt services. As a result, the concept of a solvent, illiquid sovereign debtor has generated significant literature on debt...

This paper looks beyond the comparatively good performance of the large emerging economies that gave rise to the mainstream narrative of decoupling. I discuss the negative economic and social impacts of the financial and economic crisis on the Least Developed Countries that the mainstream...

The Indian economy is presently gripped by the dual phenomenon of an unprecedented slowdown as well as financial fragility. What has triggered this? Is this simply a random exogenous shock to an otherwise well-functioning economy? Or, is there anything structural about the present slowdown? What...