The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly lengthened the list of developing and emerging market economies in debt distress. For some, a crisis is imminent. For many more, only exceptionally low global interest rates may be delaying a reckoning. Default rates are rising, and the need for debt...

This paper shows that, under fairly general conditions, lending to small countries must be supported by the direct sanctions available to creditors and cannot be supported by a country's "reputation for repayment." This distinction is critically important for understanding the true underlying...

The authors present a dynamic model of international lending in whi ch borrowers cannot commit to future repayments and debtors can sometime s successfully negotiate partial defaults or "rescheduling agreements." All parties in a debt rescheduling negotiation realize that today's rescheduling...

Troubled debtor countries do not gain by repurchasing external bank debt at market discount, even if a buyback would stimulate investment by relieving debt overhang. The reason is that buybacks allow creditors to reap more than 100 percent of any efficiency gains that might result from increased...