Sizable risk capital from outside may be necessary to accelerate Japan's corporate restructuring to replace the stock of impaired bank loans. To attract risk capital, impaired loans must find market-clearing prices. However, the asymmetry in the bid-ask prices faced by banks and distressed-debt...

We examine the evolution of the net external asset positions of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) countries over the past decade, with a strong emphasis on the composition of their international balance sheets. We assess the extent of their international financial integration, compared with the...

International financial assistance (loans and grants) can potentially raise recipients' welfare in two ways, by affecting a direct resource transfer and by facilitating efficiency-enhancing reforms. In practice, barriers to reform limit the potential of assistance to deliver these two dividends....

This paper assesses the non linear impact of external debt on growth using a large panel data set of 93 developing countries over 1969–98. Results are generally robust across different econometric methodologies, regression specifications, and different debt indicators. For a country with...

In the late 1980s Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago found themselves in severe economic difficulties. Their ensuing economic strategies were all market-based, featured fiscal contraction and trade liberalization, multilateral support loans and, later on, tax and financial sector...

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1992, several low-income countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) accumulated substantial external debt in a short time span, about half of which is owed to multilateral financial institutions. Three factors contributed to the current...

What role does China play in Africa's development? What drives China's increasing economic involvement in the continent? This paper attempts to provide a quantified assessment of China's multifaceted influence as market, donor, financer and investor, and contractor and builder. Though in the...