Debt Sustainability In Low-Income Countries Research Articles

Borrowing for Growth: Big Pushes and Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries

AbstractThe paper evaluates big push borrowing-and-investment programs in a new model-based framework of debt sustainability that is explicitly designed for policy analysis. The new framework is grounded in a fully-articulated, dynamic macroeconomic model. It allows for financing schemes that mix concessional, external commercial, and domestic debt, while taking into account the impact of public investment on growth and constraints on the speed and magnitude of fiscal adjustment. Supplementing concessional loans with nonconcessional borrowing in world capital markets is generally a high-risk, high-return strategy. It may greatly enhance the prospects for debt sustainability or lead to spectacular failure; much depends on the fine details governing debt contracts, the dynamics of growth, and the speed of fiscal adjustment.

Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries: Policies, Institutions, or Shocks?

This paper estimates the determinants of external debt distress in low-income countries (LICs), disentangling the roles of institutions, shocks, and policies. The most prominent factors in raising the risk of debt distress are the weak protection of private property rights, adverse shocks to real non-oil commodity prices, and a high debt burden. Results also suggest that weak economic institutions tend to raise the probability of debt distress through persistently weak economic policies and high vulnerability to external shocks. The model enables a more granular analysis of debt sustainability in LICs and has a higher predictive power compared to the earlier scant literature.

Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries: Policies, Institutions, or Shocks?

This paper estimates the determinants of external debt distress in low-income countries (LICs), disentangling the roles of institutions, shocks, and policies. The most prominent factors in raising the risk of debt distress are the weak protection of private property rights, adverse shocks to real non-oil commodity prices, and a high debt burden. Results also suggest that weak economic institutions tend to raise the probability of debt distress through persistently weak economic policies and high vulnerability to external shocks. The model enables a more granular analysis of debt sustainability in LICs and has a higher predictive power compared to the earlier scant literature.

Public Investment, Public Finance, and Growth: The Impact of Distortionary Taxation, Recurrent Costs, and Incomplete Appropriability

Effective public investment requires governments to address the "recurrent cost problem" to ensure operations and maintenance (O&M) expenditures are sufficient to sustain the flow of productive public capital services to private factors of production. Building on the model of Buffie et al (2012), this paper explores the macroeconomic implications of this recurrent cost problem and its resolution in a context that recognizes that taxation is distortionary. The model is also used to examine stylized fiscal reforms including the replacement of a distortionary output tax with a uniform consumption tax and budgetary reforms that restore O&M expenditures to their efficient levels. These experiments are stylized but clearly demonstrate the material consequences of the tax and public expenditure structures for growth and debt sustainability in low-income countries.

On the sustainability of external debt: is debt relief enough?

Elaborating on Pasinetti (1998), the ‘geometry of debt sustainability’ (GDS) represents an analytical tool for the analysis of the long term sustainability of foreign debt. The paper focuses on debt sustainability in low-income countries, which face several major challenges simultaneously: achieving economic growth, consolidating human development goals and meeting regular debt service payments. The GDS reveals how the ‘structural’ aspect of debt sustainability—as indicated by trends in the non-interest current account—is closely interlinked with sustainability from a ‘financial’ point of view— as indicated by the relationship between the growth and the interest rate. The GDS shows why both debt cancellation and additional aid are necessary to give indebted low-income economies a chance to improve their long term economic viability.

Preserving Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries in the Wake of the Global Crisis

We cannot allow the return of economic stability to signify a return to "business as usual" for the IMF. The crisis exposed huge cracks in the international financial architecture of which the Fund is a key part. We have an historic responsibility to fix them. I urge all of us to recommit to seeing our collective goals to the finish line before reform fatigue sets in.

Will World Bank and IMF Lending Lead to HIPC-IV? Debt Déjà-Vu All Over Again

Four years ago, the G-7 pushed through an unprecedented initiative forcing the international financial institutions to cancel 100 percent of their outstanding debt claims on the world’s poorest countries. Through the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), these heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) stand to receive up to $60 billion in debt relief over time. Moreover, the World Bank, African Development Bank, and IMF shareholders approved a new debt sustainability framework to govern future lending decisions and prevent the need for yet another round of systemic debt relief. All parties emerged from these landmark agreements confident that the dragon of unsustainable debt finally had been slain. However, several unsettling trends raise serious questions about the finality of these actions. First, World Bank and AfDB lending disbursement volumes to these very same HIPC countries remain very high, and nearly the same as compared to pre-MDRI. Emergency IMF lending in response to the global economic crisis has compounded the situation. Second, IMF and World Bank growth projections for HIPCs remain overly rosy compared to actual and historical performance. Our new dataset of IMF growth projections suggests a structural optimism of at least one percentage point per year. Third, HIPCs continue to experience significant volatility in country performance measures that has a direct impact on their ability to carry debt sustainably. Taken together, these findings suggest that donor countries should re-examine the issue of debt sustainability in low-income countries and the system for determining the appropriate grant/loan mix. The upcoming IDA and AfDF replenishment negotiations present a timely opportunity to do so. Absent assertive and corrective action, the international community may be faced with the prospect of a HIPC IV agreement in the not too distant future.

Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries - Further Considerations on an Operational Framework and Policy Implications

This paper seeks to address queries on several operational issues: (i) the robustness of the indicative thresholds; (ii) modalities for implementing DSAs; and (iii) operational implications for the Fund, Bank, and other international financial institutions and creditors.

Operational Framework for Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries - Implications for Fund Program Design

Operational Framework for Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries - Implications for Fund Program Design

Debt-Sustainability in Low-Income Countries - Proposal for an Operational Framework and Policy Implications

Debt-Sustainability in Low-Income Countries - Proposal for an Operational Framework and Policy Implications

Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries - Toward a Forward-Looking Strategy

Debt Sustainability in Low-Income Countries - Toward a Forward-Looking Strategy