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Odious Debt

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Author Info
Michael Kremer
Seema Jayachandran

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Abstract

Some argue that sovereign debt incurred without the consent of the people and not for their benefit, such as that of apartheid South Africa, should be considered odious and not transferable to successor governments. We argue that an institution that truthfully announced whether regimes are odious could create an equilibrium in which successor governments suffer no reputational loss from failure to repay odious debt and hence creditors curtail odious lending. Equilibria with odious lending could be eliminated by amending creditor country laws to prevent seizure of assets for failure to repay odious debt and restricting foreign assistance to countries not repaying odious debt. Shutting down the borrowing capacity of illegitimate regimes can be viewed as a form of economic sanction and has two advantages over most sanctions: it helps rather than hurts the population, and it does not create incentives for evasion by third parties. However, an institution empowered to assess regimes might falsely term debt odious if it favored debtors, and if creditors anticipate this, they would not make loans to legitimate governments. An institution empowered only to declare future lending to a particular government odious would have greater incentives to judge truthfully. A similar approach could be used to reduce moral hazard associated with World Bank and IMF loans.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 8953.

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Date of creation: May 2002
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8953

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
F34 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Lending and Debt Problems
K33 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - International Law

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  1. Eaton, Jonathan & Fernandez, Raquel, 1995. "Sovereign debt," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 3, pages 2031-2077 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Harold L. Cole & Patrick J. Kehoe, 1996. "Reputation spillover across relationships: reviving reputation models of debt," Staff Report 209, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
  3. Bulow, Jeremy & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1989. "Sovereign Debt: Is to Forgive to Forget?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 43-50, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Michael Kremer & Seema Jayachandran, 2002. "Odious Debt," NBER Working Papers 8953, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Thomas, Jonathan P., 2002. "Bankruptcy Proceedings for Sovereign State Insolvency," Working Papers UNU-WIDER Research Paper , World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). [Downloadable!]
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  2. Magdalena Polan & Udaibir S. Das & Michael G. Papaioannou, 2008. "Strategic Considerations for First-Time Sovereign Bond Issuers," IMF Working Papers 08/261, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
  3. Kimberly Ann Elliott & Debayani Kar & J. David Richardson, 2002. "Assessing Globalization's Critics: "Talkers Are No Good Doers???"," Peterson Institute Working Paper Series WP02-5, Peterson Institute for International Economics. [Downloadable!]
  4. Serkan Arslanalp & Peter Blair Henry, 2002. "Debt Relief: What Do the Markets Think?," NBER Working Papers 9369, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. James K. Boyce, 2007. "Public finance, aid and post-conflict recovery," Working Papers 2007-09, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  6. James Boyce & Léonce Ndikumana, 2008. "New Estimates of Capital Flight from Sub-Saharan African Countries: Linkages with External Borrowing and Policy Options," Working Papers wp166, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. [Downloadable!]
  7. Fofack, Hippolyte, 2009. "Causality between external debt and capital flight in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5042, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  8. Seema Jayachandran, 2004. "Odious Debt," UCLA Economics Online Papers 298, UCLA Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  9. Casey B. Mulligan & Kevin K. Tsui, 2006. "Political Competitiveness," NBER Working Papers 12653, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Beja, Jr., Edsel, 2009. "The Philippines on debt row," MPRA Paper 16553, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  11. Olivier Jeanne & Jeromin Zettelmeyer, 2004. "The Mussa Theorem: and Other Results on IMF Induced Moral Hazard," IMF Working Papers 04/192, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
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  12. Victor Vaugirard, 2005. "Crony Capitalism and Sovereign Default," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 77-99, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Léonce Ndikumana, 2006. "Corruption and Pro-Poor Growth Outcomes: Evidence and Lessons for African Countries," Working Papers wp120, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. [Downloadable!]
  14. Patricia Alvarez-Plata & Tilman Brück, 2006. "External Debt in Post-Conflict Countries," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 613, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
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  15. Casey B. Mulligan & Kevin K. Tsui, 2008. "Political Entry, Public Policies, and the Economy," NBER Working Papers 13830, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. James Boyce, 2007. "Public Finance, Aid and Post-Conflict Recovery," Working Papers wp140, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. [Downloadable!]
  17. Kimberly Ann. Elliott & Debayani Kar & J. David Richardson, 2004. "Assessing Globalization’s Critics: “Talkers Are No Good Doers?”," NBER Chapters, in: Challenges to Globalization: Analyzing the Economics, pages 17-62 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
  18. Presbitero, Andrea F., 2008. "The Debt-Growth Nexus in Poor Countries: A Reassessment," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, vol. 2(30), pages 1-28. [Downloadable!]
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  19. Pierre-Olivier & Olivier Jeanne, 2009. "Capital Flows to Developing Countries: The Allocation Puzzle," Peterson Institute Working Paper Series WP09-12, Peterson Institute for International Economics. [Downloadable!]
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