This paper responds to the Board's request for an assessment of eligible countries that could qualify for Fund debt relief under the MDRI once the requisite consents and requests have been received. Directors requested that, by end-2005, staff prepare, in collaboration with the World Bank, an...

A number of political economy concerns are associated with the provision of foreign aid to developing economies. These concerns suggest that foreign aid is likely to have harmful effects on a recipient's institutional quality; also that attempts to give aid conditional on policy and...

The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPCI) and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) were both implemented based on an assumption derived from the debt overhang hypothesis - that is, that the removal of excessive debt burdens would help to boost investment and economic...