Is the international financial architecture debate over? Not according to leading experts gathered together in this impressive volume who try to identify the key trends that will fashion the international financial system in the years ahead. As history has shown, the evolution of the...

Within the next few months, the Greek government, is supposed to persuade private creditors holding about EUR 200bn in its bonds to voluntarily exchange their existing bonds for new bonds that pay roughly 50 percent less. This may work with large creditors whose failure to participate in a debt...

The Greek debt restructuring of 2012 stands out in the history of sovereign defaults. It achieved very large debt relief – over 50 per cent of 2012 GDP – with minimal financial disruption, using a combination of new legal techniques, exceptionally large cash incentives, and official sector...

Using industry-level data, this paper tries to explain why financial integration raised growth differentials between externally dependent and less dependent industries in European transition countries, but not in other developing or advanced countries in the years preceding the current crisis....

We identify structural breaks in economic growth in 140 countries and use these to define “growth spells:” periods of high growth preceded by an upbreak and ending either with a downbreak or with the end of the sample. Growth spells tend to be shorter in African and Latin American countries...

We estimate ex post returns to emerging market debt by combining secondary-market prices with observed flows based on World Bank data. From 1970–2000, returns averaged 9% per annum, about the same as returns on a ten-year US treasury bond. This reflects the combined effect of the 1980s debt...

We present a framework that clarifies the financial role of the IMF, the rationale for conditionality, and the conditions under which IMF-induced moral hazard can arise. In the model, traditional conditionality commits country authorities to undertake crisis resolution efforts, facilitating the...

This paper computes debt relief and investor losses associated with the major emerging market defaults and debt restructurings of the 1998-2005 period. Investor losses ranged from 13% to 75%, based on comparing the market value of the new debt with the net present value of the old debt evaluated...

We analyze the effects of bailout expectations on sovereign bond spreads in emerging markets. The non-bailout of Russia in August 1998 is interpreted as an event that decreased the perceived probability of future crisis lending to emerging markets. If official rescues are expected to mitigate...