IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v20y2006i3p341-365.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When Is External Debt Sustainable?

Author

Listed:
  • Aart Kraay
  • Vikram Nehru

Abstract

The article empirically examines the determinants of debt distress, defined as periods in which countries resort to any of three forms of exceptional finance: significant arrears on external debt, Paris Club rescheduling, and nonconcessional International Monetary Fund lending. Probit regressions show that three factors explain a substantial fraction of the cross-country and time-series variation in the incidence of debt distress: the debt burden, the quality of policies and institutions, and shocks. The relative importance of these factors varies with the level of development. These results are robust to a variety of alternative specifications, and the core specifications have substantial out-of-sample predictive power. The quantitative implications of these results are examined for the lending strategies of official creditors. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Aart Kraay & Vikram Nehru, 2006. "When Is External Debt Sustainable?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 20(3), pages 341-365.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:20:y:2006:i:3:p:341-365
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff & Miguel A. Savastano, 2003. "Debt Intolerance," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 34(1), pages 1-74.
    2. Mrs. Lynn Aylward & Mr. Rupert Thorne, 1998. "An Econometric Analysis of Countries' Repayment Performance to the International Monetary Fund," IMF Working Papers 1998/032, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2005. "Simple solutions to the initial conditions problem in dynamic, nonlinear panel data models with unobserved heterogeneity," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 39-54, January.
    4. Carmen M. Reinhart, 2002. "Default, Currency Crises, and Sovereign Credit Ratings," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 16(2), pages 151-170, August.
    5. repec:rus:hseeco:123922 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Berg, Andrew & Sachs, Jeffrey, 1988. "The debt crisis structural explanations of country performance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 271-306, November.
    7. Daniel Cohen, 1998. "The Sustainability of African Debt," International Economic Association Series, in: Daniel Cohen (ed.), Contemporary Economic Issues, chapter 7, pages 160-181, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Lynn Aylward & Rupert Thorne, 1998. "Countries' Repayment Performance Vis-Ã -Vis the IMF: An Empirical Analysis," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 45(4), pages 595-618, December.
    9. Nancy Birdsall & Stijn Claessens & Ishac Diwan, 2003. "Policy Selectivity Forgone: Debt and Donor Behavior in Africa," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 17(3), pages 409-435, December.
    10. Lloyd-Ellis, H. & McKenzie, G. W. & Thomas, S. H., 1990. "Predicting the quantity of LDC debt rescheduling," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 67-73, January.
    11. Mr. Axel Schimmelpfennig & Nouriel Roubini & Paolo Manasse, 2003. "Predicting Sovereign Debt Crises," IMF Working Papers 2003/221, International Monetary Fund.
    12. World Bank, 2003. "The World Bank Annual Report 2003," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13929, December.
    13. Ms. Enrica Detragiache & Mr. Antonio Spilimbergo, 2001. "Crises and Liquidity: Evidence and Interpretation," IMF Working Papers 2001/002, International Monetary Fund.
    14. World Bank, 2003. "The World Bank Annual Report 2003," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 13930, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Caroline Rijckeghem & Beatrice Weder, 2009. "Political institutions and debt crises," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 387-408, March.
    2. Kalotychou, Elena & Staikouras, Sotiris K., 2006. "An empirical investigation of the loan concentration risk in Latin America," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 363-384, October.
    3. Moreno Badia, Marialuz & Medas, Paulo & Gupta, Pranav & Xiang, Yuan, 2022. "Debt is not free," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    4. Bernardin Akitoby & Thomas Stratmann, 2008. "Fiscal Policy and Financial Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(533), pages 1971-1985, November.
    5. Weder di Mauro, Beatrice & Van Rijckeghem, Caroline, 2004. "The Politics Of Debt Crises," CEPR Discussion Papers 4683, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Manasse, Paolo & Roubini, Nouriel, 2009. ""Rules of thumb" for sovereign debt crises," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 192-205, July.
    7. Eijffinger, Sylvester C.W. & Karataş, Bilge, 2023. "Three sisters: The interlinkage between sovereign debt, currency, and banking crises," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    8. Ratha, Dilip & De, Prabal K. & Mohapatra, Sanket, 2011. "Shadow Sovereign Ratings for Unrated Developing Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 295-307, March.
    9. Jelena Laušev & Aleksandar Stojanović & Nataša Todorović, 2011. "Determinants Of Debt Rescheduling In Eastern European Countries," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 56(188), pages 7-31, January –.
    10. De Paoli, Bianca & Hoggarth, Glenn & Saporta, Victoria, 2009. "Output costs of sovereign crises: some empirical estimates," Bank of England working papers 362, Bank of England.
    11. Oya Celasun & Philipp Harms, 2011. "Boon Or Burden? The Effect Of Private Sector Debt On The Risk Of Sovereign Default In Developing Countries," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(1), pages 70-88, January.
    12. Samir Jahjah & Bin Wei & Vivian Zhanwei Yue, 2013. "Exchange Rate Policy and Sovereign Bond Spreads in Developing Countries," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(7), pages 1275-1300, October.
    13. Seung Jung Lee, 2009. "How Information Quality of Macro Aggregates Affects Sovereign Risk: An Empirical Investigation," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 510-532, August.
    14. Furceri, Davide & Zdzienicka, Aleksandra, 2012. "How costly are debt crises?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 726-742.
    15. Eduardo Borensztein & Ugo Panizza, 2009. "The Costs of Sovereign Default," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 56(4), pages 683-741, November.
    16. Rupa Duttagupta & Mr. Guillermo Tolosa, 2006. "Fiscal Discipline and Exchange Rate Regimes: Evidence From the Caribbean," IMF Working Papers 2006/119, International Monetary Fund.
    17. Martin Bruns & Tigran Poghosyan, 2018. "Leading indicators of fiscal distress: evidence from extreme bounds analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(13), pages 1454-1478, March.
    18. Luis Catão & Sandeep Kapur, 2006. "Volatility and the Debt-Intolerance Paradox," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 53(2), pages 1-1.
    19. Gelos, R. Gaston & Sahay, Ratna & Sandleris, Guido, 2011. "Sovereign borrowing by developing countries: What determines market access?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 243-254, March.
    20. Alessio Ciarlone & Giorgio Trebeschi, 2006. "A Multinomial Approach to Early Warning Systems for Debt Crises," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 588, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:20:y:2006:i:3:p:341-365. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.