Debt and Adjustment in the World Economy: Structural Asymmetries in North-South Interactions

The dismal experience of many developing countries with the use of large inflows of commercial bank loans and official development assistance in the 1970s and 1980s has manifested the continuous external vulnerability of their economies. This study provides a rigorous theoretical and empirical analysis of the international aspects of development finance, Credit-rationing rules set by bank managers and donor governments, together with uncoordinated macroeconomic policies in the industrialized world, tend to create unstable and inadequate external financing conditions for the developing world. This study not only makes overly clear that a global framework is needed to assess the contribution of external financial resources for development, it provides one as well.