This paper models the resource implications of debt relief provided to low-income countries (LICs). Obtaining debt relief does not necessarily lead to individual aid-dependent countries receiving more overall resources from the donor community. Preliminary cross-section estimates suggest that...

This paper surveys the economic literature on the scaling-up of aid to Africa. It provides a checklist of issues that need to be considered when preparing a long term macroeconomic projection for a country involving the assumption of a significant increase in aid. Such scaling-up scenarios are...

Improving debt management capacity in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) is a key element of the international community’s strategy for ensuring a robust and sustained exit from unsustainable debt burdens. External debt management is a multi-facetted task involving the formulation of a...

The low-income country debt crisis had its origins in weak macroeconomic policies, and official creditors’ willingness to take risks unacceptable to private lenders. Payments problems were initially addressed through nonconcessional reschedulings and new lending that maximized financing while...

Summary Much attention has been paid to helping economies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The conventional instruments for providing assistance have been foreign aid disbursements and debt relief. But have debt relief initiatives complemented or...

The strategic allocation of resources across multiple fronts has long been studied in the context of Blotto games in which two players simultaneously select their allocations. However many allocation problems are sequential. For example, a state trying to defend against a terrorist attack...

The external debt burden of many low-income developing countries has increased significantly since the 1970s. Developments in a sample of ten countries show that the main factors behind the buildup of debt were (1) exogenous (adverse terms of trade shocks or weather), (2) a lack of sustained...

Australian banks are widely considered to have fared far better during the Global Financial Crisis than their global counterparts, continuing to display solid earnings, good capitalization and strong credit ratings. Nonetheless, Australian banks experienced significant deterioration in the...