Uganda is the first country to benefit from the 1996 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, which offers a number of low-income countries an opportunity to negotiate a reduction of their external debt, and is utilizing the savings from the relief to implement social sector reforms,...

Substantial amounts of debt relief have been granted to a set of low-income countries, as an alternative aid modality. Although the theoretical case for debt relief is firmly established, only empirical analysis can show whether debt relief is indeed a (more) effective mode of aid delivery. We...

This paper discusses to what extent debt relief embedded in debt swaps linked to development can be helpful in reaching development goals such as the Millennium Development Goals. A range of historical and current international debt relief practices and proposals is assessed on the basis of...

Spanish Abstract: Este artículo trata sobre la naturaleza de las crisis económicas en la Argentina. La opinión usual las vincula con la escasez de divisas. En este ensayo se polemiza con esta tesis. El punto de partida del análisis es la teoría del imperialismo. A principios del siglo xx,...

We develop a theoretical model showing that countercyclical transfers from a wealthy donor to a poorer recipient generate a signal of altruistic donor motivation. Using OECD foreign aid (ODA) data we find the signal present in approximately one-sixth of a large set of donor-recipient pairs. We...

We estimate a canonical sovereign default model from Arellano (2008) for Argentina via maximum simulated likelihood estimation to understand how well it performs in terms of predicting default events. The estimated model accounts for the overall default patterns of Argentina and closely matches...

This paper discusses the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative in the perspective of sizable historical debt relief and large positive net resource flows to HIPCs. It argues that, by substantially reducing HIPCs' debt stocks and debt service payments, the Initiative provides a solid...

At present, the enhanced HIPC initiative and the Gleneagles Proposal for debt write-downs by the G8 are the main mechanisms used to reduce indebtedness of low-income countries. In these countries where poor governance is a key issue, it is naïve to believe that the Millennium Development Goals...

This study has assessed the role of existing policies in determining the state of debt sustainability for the Pakistan economy (1980- June 2019) through fiscal reaction function. This study adds to the literature in two aspects. First, a policy index has been constructed to formulate a...

Sub-Saharan Africa has made the least progress over the past three decades, and - except for South Africa - it is now one of the world's poorest regions. Even a country relatively untouched by war that had been widely hailed as "reformed" by the early 1990s, Tanzania, has turned in a...