We develop an early-warning model of sovereign debt crises. A country is defined to be in a debt crisis if it is classified as being in default by Standard & Poor''s, or if it has access to nonconcessional IMF financing in excess of 100 percent of quota. By means of logit and binary recursive...

This paper reviews Lebanon's ability to manage financial pressures following severe shocks despite its large public debt overhang and significant external vulnerabilities. Based on interviews with market participants in Beirut and London, the paper concludes that Lebanon's ability to weather...

The difficulties related to the concept of sustainability and the analytical limits of available indicators for policy purposes are illustrated by Nigel Chalk and Richard Hemming. The authors examine the present value budget constraint and point to some of its limitations. Drawing on the IMF's...