In 1960, there were 101 middle-income countries. By 2008, only thirteen of these had become high-income countries. Why do so many middle-income countries fail to develop after a promising start, becoming mired in the so-called middle-income trap? This interdisciplinary volume addresses the...

The problem of odious debt typically arises when a despotic regime has incurred substantial sovereign debt and is then succeeded by a less-despotic, possibly democratic, regime that seeks to repudiate that debt. There is no agreed-upon method for dealing with attempts to repudiate odious debt....

This paper concerns the increasing use of international commitment devices by developing countries. These devices include bilateral investment treaties, international arbitration, and multilateral trade commitments. The conventional wisdom is that such devices help to remedy local institutional...