Overcoming Developing Country Debt Crises

• Main Authors: Herman, Barry, Ocampo, José Antonio, Spiegel, Shari
• Format: eBook Book
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 18.02.2010; Oxford University Press, Incorporated
• Edition: 1
• Series: Initiative for Policy Dialogue
• Subjects: Debt management; Debt relief; Debts, External; Developing countries; Development Planning and Policy; Economic conditions; Economic crisis; Economic Development and Growth; External debt; Financial systems; International trade; Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; National Budget, Deficit, and Debt; Public debt; Reform; politics; international reform; sovereign debt workouts; international treatment; sovereign debt crises; sovereign debt
• ISBN: 0199578788; 9780199578788; 9780199578795; 0199578796
• DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199578788.001.0001

Developing country debt crises have been a recurrent phenomenon over the past two centuries. Despite the fact that several developing countries now have stronger economic fundamentals than they did in the 1990s, sovereign debt crises will recur. Indeed, today we are in the midst of an almost unprecedented global ‘bust’. The conventional wisdom today is that the international economic and financial system is broken. The call in this book for international reform of sovereign debt workouts derives from both economic theory and real‐world experiences of different processes used for debt workouts. Country case studies underline the point that we need to do better. We recognize that the politics of the international treatment of sovereign debt has not supported systemic reform efforts thus far; however, failure in the past does not preclude success in the future in an evolving international political environment, and the book thus puts forth alternative reform ideas for consideration.