Search

Begin New Search Topic Debt Publication Year within 25 Years

261. Reform of the International Monetary Fund

Author:
C. Fred Bergsten
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
It is a pleasure to testify before the Committee again concerning your ongoing oversight of the International Monetary Fund. The topic remains of great importance, and our Institute for International Economics will in fact be holding a major conference on IMF reform on September 23 to address a number of specific proposals for strengthening and enforcing the rules of the monetary system, improving the governance of the Fund itself, reforming its lending programs, and reassessing the ways in which it might be financed in the future. All members of the Subcommittee and staff are cordially invited to participate in our event.
Topic:
International Relations, Debt, Economics, and International Political Economy

262. Domestic and External Debt: The Doomed Quest for Equal Treatment

Author:
Brad Setser and Anna Gelpern
Publication Date:
05-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
"Equality" has the ring of a basic value, an incontrovertible virtue. In international finance, equal treatment is enshrined in treaties and contracts. Of all the equal treatment aspirations in finance, none seems more essential to a lawyer than equal treatment of creditors holding identical legal instruments: if one is to suffer a default, surely so should the others; restructuring options available to one must be open to all without regard to the creditor's identity. Yet in the world of sovereign debt, local and foreign investors buying the same paper rarely achieve what anyone would recognize as equal treatment.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance

263. The US Economic Outlook

Author:
Martin Neil Baily and Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Oil prices have risen and are expected to remain high. Slow job and wage growth result in slow income growth. Low interest rates kept housing and auto sales strong after 2000 – borrowing future growth. No new stimulus from monetary or fiscal policy. The Iraq war and the terrorism threat may be a drag on confidence. Because 9/11 did not have significant macroeconomic effects, the impact of the war and terrorism seems to be mostly on oil prices No new stimulus from monetary or fiscal policy.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq

264. Why Is the World Bank Still Lending?

Author:
Adam Lerrick
Publication Date:
11-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
World Bank money is building schools in China's impoverished western provinces, but the bill for interest charges is being mailed to the United Kingdom, attention Chancellor of Exchequer Gordon Brown. Mexico, Chile, and Brazil will soon be lining up for the same deal. This is but the latest scheme designed to preserve the World Bank's lending role at a time when the need and demand for its services are falling. Major middle-income countries, the cream of the bank's lending portfolio and where more than 80 percent of Latin Americans live, are curbing their borrowing and paying down their balances, setting off alarms at the bank. Net loan flows have shifted from a positive $10 billion in 1999–2001, to a negative $15 billion in 2002–2004.
Topic:
Debt, Development, Economics, and Third World
Political Geography:
China, United Kingdom, Brazil, Latin America, Mexico, and Chile

265. It Works; It Doesn't; It Can, But That Depends...: 50 Years of Controversy over the Macroeconomic Impact of Development Aid

Author:
Mark McGillivray, Simon Feeny, Robert Lensink, and Niels Hermes
Publication Date:
08-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This paper surveys 50 years of empirical research on the macroeconomic impact of aid, looking mainly at studies examining the link between aid and growth. It argues that studies dating until the late 1990s produced either contradictory or inconclusive results. Aid either worked, or it didn't, according to this research. The paper then highlights a major shift in the literature that coincided with the release of the World Bank's Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why. Practically all research published since that report agrees with its general finding that aid works, to the extent that in its absence growth would be lower. One controversy may therefore have been settled. Yet, we show, the report has set-off an intense de bate over the context in which aid works. That debate centres on whether the effectiveness of these inflows depends on the policy regime of recipient countries. Some possible avenues through which the heat might be taken out of this debate are considered.
Topic:
International Relations, Debt, Development, and Economics

266. Diamonds, Foreign Aid, and the Uncertain Prospects for Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Sierra Leone

Author:
J. Andrew Grant
Publication Date:
08-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
This article examines the external and internal dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone. The United Nations, bilateral donors such as the United Kingdom, and transnational non-governmental organizations and aid agencies have been instrumental in providing much-needed external assistance to Sierra Leone during the latter stages of its civil war and in the immediate post-war period. Although foreign aid is a welcome source of external support for reconstruction efforts, it is finite like any other resource. Reconstruction must also address intangible issues such as corruption as well as the healing of society through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Diamond exports hold potential as an internal source to spur economic growth and reconstruction. However, as the article illustrates, many obstacles remain, ranging from governance weaknesses in terms of capacity and domestic regulatory schemes on diamonds to the existence of illicit mining and smuggling of diamonds to regional instability.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Debt, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa and United Kingdom

267. CATO Institute: Deficits, Interest Rates, and Taxes: Myths and Realities

Author:
Alan Reynolds
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The federal government's swing from budget surpluses to budget deficits has raised concerns about possible negative economic effects. Some economists have argued that deficits will raise interest rates, reduce economic growth, increase trade deficits, and possibly create a financial crisis.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
United States

268. Privatization in Brcko District: Why It Is Different and Why It Works

Author:
Henry L. Clarke
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Wilson Center
Abstract:
The Brcko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina is small, with less than 100,000 people. In 2001, about 30 public companies were selected for privatization. At the outset, there were good reasons to ask whether the District would have any success in privatizing them. Many of the public companies had been shut down for up to ten years, while the rest were operating at a small fraction of their pre-1991 output. There was not a single company that was profitable enough to be sold successfully on the basis of its performance, none had adequate working capital or marketing arrangements, many were deeply in debt, some had too many nonworking “employees” and the equipment of most companies that was not damaged during the war was worn out or obsolete.
Topic:
Debt, Government, Politics, and Privatization
Political Geography:
Europe, Bosnia, and Herzegovina

269. A Short History of the Washington Consensus

Author:
John Williamson
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The term “Washington Consensus” was coined in 1989. The first written usage was in my background paper for a conference that the Institute for International Economics convened in order to examine the extent to which the old ideas of development economics that had governed Latin American economic policy since the 1950s were being swept aside by the set of ideas that had long been accepted as appropriate within the OECD. In order to try and ensure that the background papers for that conference dealt with a common set of issues, I made a list of ten policies that I thought more or less everyone in Washington would agree were needed more or less everywhere in Latin America, and labeled this the “Washington Consensus.” Little did it occur to me that fifteen years later I would be asked to write about the history of a term that had become the center of fierce ideological controversy.
Topic:
International Relations, Debt, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Washington and Latin America

270. A Contract Perspective on the International Finance Facility

Author:
George Mavrotas and Tun Lin
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
The present paper is a first attempt to develop a theoretical model using a short-term vis-á-vis long-term contract framework within which donor countries' endorsement or rejection decision towards the recently proposed International Finance Facility (IFF) is rationalized. The current foreign aid system is portrayed as being similar to a series of short-term contracts, where donor countries are able to adjust the aid amount to reflect environmental change (broadly defined to take into account changes in public opinion, domestic situation, etc.). The benefit of this system is in its flexibility. Frontloading aid, on the other hand, as proposed by the IFF proposal, has the benefit of smoothing out the flows over time. In the model presented in this paper, donor countries balance these two contract schemes to determine the endorsement or rejection of the IFF proposal. By using historical aid data covering the period 1990-2003 for all DAC donor countries, our empirical analysis shows the payoffs and relative advantages of these two contract schemes.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance