Is generalized debt relief an effective development strategy, or should assistance be tailored to countries' characteristics? To answer this question, the authors build a simple model in which recipient governments reveal their creditworthiness if donors offer them to choose between aid and debt...

November 1999 - Theoretical models predict that countries with unchanged long-run savings preferences will respond to debt relief by running up new debts or by running down assets. And there are some signs that incremental debt relief over the past two decades has fulfilled those predictions....