• Medientyp: E-Artikel
  • Titel: Odious Debt in an Imperfect World
  • Beteiligte: Janus, Thorsten
  • Erschienen: Wiley, 2012
  • Erschienen in: Review of Development Economics, 16 (2012) 2, Seite 305-317
  • Sprache: Englisch
  • DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9361.2012.00663.x
  • ISSN: 1363-6669; 1467-9361
  • Entstehung:
  • Anmerkungen:
  • Beschreibung: AbstractThe odious debt problem refers to a government's ability to borrow for elite consumption while the general population repays. Although an intuitive response is to ban lending to such regimes, this paper shows that if a government faces endogenous replacement risk, then an international odious debt doctrine which (i) decreases the country's debt ceiling; (ii) decreases the likelihood that the citizens must repay the debt; or (iii) increases the government's cost of borrowing for a given default risk can all decrease citizens' welfare. These findings suggest that, even when a regime is clearly odious, allowing it to borrow up to a point may be preferable to a complete lending ban.