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...

Acknowledgments -- Introduction / Martin Guzman, Jose Antonio Ocampo, and Joseph E. Stiglitz -- General issues of sovereign debt restructuring -- Fixing sovereign debt restructuring / Martin Guzman and Joseph E. Stiglitz -- Sovereign debt of developing countries : overview of trends and policy...