開途國 外債問題

The Debt Problem of Developing Countries: Default Risk and Debt Reduction

A striking feature of international borrowing is the existence of sovereign risk. The deveolping-country debt crisis in the 1980s highlights the risk of default. This paper aims to clarify key issues central to the debt crisis and draw some lessons from it for coping with the debt problem. After reviewing causes and development of the debt crisis, it focuses on interrelated, but seemingly contradictory concepts : default and debt reduction. The paper proposes a two-period interemporal model under uncertainty of second-period income. The utility maximizing debtor compares the cost of default with the benefits from default. Accordingly, the default risk is assumed to depend on factors affecting the debt servicing capacity and the debt burden. A empirical study on the 16 highly indebted countries confirms that the default risk is positively related to the amount of debt and negatively to the economic growth rate. The debt reduction was adopted in the lated 1980s in order to deal with the debt crisis. It is shown that the market-based debt reduction is possible only if the debt reduces the default risk so that the expected amount of debt service increases. The following empirical study reveals that debt reduction during the debt crisis was actually concentrated on a few countries with the relatively sound debt servicing capacity. The debt burden is still too high for many developing countries, and negative external shocks may rekindle the debt crisis. For developing countries, it is prerequisite to improve the debt-servicing capacity in order to induce foreign capital. From the creditor’s viewpoint, a more effective enforcement mechanism ensuring repayment of debt is needed in order to resolve the debt problem once and for all.