Can Output Losses Following International Financial Crises be Avoided?

Michael P. Dooley

NBER Working Paper No. 7531
Issued in February 2000
NBER Program(s):   IFM

Recent financial crises in emerging markets have been followed by temporary but substantial losses in output. This paper explores the possibility that threats of such losses are the dominant incentive for repayment of international debt. In this environment private debtors and creditors have strong incentives to design international contracts so that renegotiation is costly. Such contracts generate dead weight losses and proposals for reform of the international monetary system that modify explicit and implicit contractual arrangements and can be welfare improving under special circumstances. However, such proposals might also weaken the incentives that make private international debt possible.

(216 K)

Published: Dooley, Michael P. "International Financial Architecture And Strategic Default: Can Financial Crises Be Less Painful?," Carnegic-Rochester Conference Series on Public PolicyP, 2000, v53(1), 361-377.

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