If interest rates (country spreads) rise, debt can rapidly be subject to a snowball effect, which then becomes self-fulfilling with regard to the fundamentals themselves. This is a market imperfection, because we cannot be confident that the unaided market will choose the good equilibrium' over...

This book is an in-depth discussion of rising inequalities in the western world. It explores the extent to which rising inequalities are the mechanical consequence of changes in economic fundamentals (such as changes in technological or demographic parameters), and to what extent they are the...

Contributors to this volume - Bruno Amable (CEPREMAP, Paris - France) Philippe Askenazy (CNRS and CEPREMAP, Paris - France) Eric Bartelsman (Free University, Amsterdam - The Netherlands) Andrea Bassanini (OECD, Paris - France) Daniel Cohen (Delta, Paris - France) Gosta Esping-Andersen...

This book is an in-depth discussion of rising inequalities in the western world. It explores the extent to which rising inequalities are the mechanical consequence of changes in economic fundamentals (such as changes in technological or demographic parameters), and to what extent they are the...

We analyze the pattern of growth of a nation which borrows abroad and which has the option of repudiating its foreign debt. We show that the equilibrium strategy of competitive lenders is to make the growth of the foreign debt contingent on the growth of the borrowing country. We give a...

This paper presents a theoretical model to describe the effects of default risk on international lending to LDC sovereign borrowers. The threat of defaults in international lending is shown to give rise to many characteristics of the syndicated loan market: (1) quantity rationing of loans; (2)...

Tables of national competitiveness give an easily comparable ranking of the winners and losers of global economic competition. But they don't explain why the “poor” countries are four times less productive than the “rich” ones or why some rich countries are twice as productive as others....

Les palmarès de la compétitivité nationale permettent de définir un classement, avec des possibilités de comparaisons immédiates, des gagnants et des perdants de la compétition économique mondiale.Cependant, ils laissent un certain nombre de questions sans réponse. S’appuyant sur des...