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...

Over recent years, a number of emerging creditors have increased their aid and lending to Africa’s Low-Income Countries (LICs). This has fed worries that new official lenders may be undoing years of international efforts to rein in over-indebtedness in Africa, to reduce the continent’s...

Fiscal policy and net capital inflows in developing countries are procyclical. A large amount of literature has examined this phenomenon and explored its consequences for aggregate fluctuations. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are an important source of external finance for governments and...

The paper shows that international government borrowing from multilateral development banks is countercyclical while international government borrowing form private sector lenders is procyclical. The countercyclicality of official lending is mostly driven by the behavior of the World Bank...

Despite the frequency of official debt restructurings, little systematic evidence has been produced on their characteristics and implications. Using a dataset covering more than 400 Paris Club agreements, this paper aims to fill that gap. It provides a comprehensive description of the evolving...

Until recently, few efforts have been made to systematically measure and aggregate the nominal value of the different types of sovereign government debt in default. To help fill this gap, the Bank of Canada (BoC) developed a comprehensive database of sovereign defaults that is posted on its...

Compared with China's dominance in world trade, its expanding role in global finance is poorly documented and understood. Over the past decades, China has exported record amounts of capital to the rest of the world. Many of these financial flows are not reported to the IMF, the BIS or the World...

Sound and efficient external debt sustainability is an essential instrument to shred the notoriety of indebtedness and to ameliorate economic growth. This study was conducted with an objective to examine the determinants of foreign debt sustainability in Ethiopia using a yearly time series data...

Compared with China's pre-eminent status in world trade, its role in global finance is poorly understood. This paper studies the size, characteristics, and determinants of China's capital exports building a new database of 5000 loans and grants to 152 countries, 1949-2017. We find that 50% of...

Ausgelöst durch das Zusammentreffen niedriger Zinsen in reichen Ländern und einem hohen Finanzierungsbedarf für Infrastruktur in vielen ärmeren Ländern befindet sich die Verschuldung der Länder des Globalen Südens seit Jahren auf einem dramatisch hohen Niveau. Hohe Schuldendienstzahlungen...