Debt Relief and Changing Governance Structures in Developing Countries

In recent decades donor countries have initiated several new programmes for cancelling the debts of developing countries. The two HIPC initiatives of the World Bank and the IMF and, more recently, the efforts by the G-8 countries to substantially increase debt relief, are not only major endeavours to solve the problems emerging from developing countries with high debts, but are also intended to change governance structures in recipient countries and encourage sound economic and political reform.

But have these debt relief programmes been tailored in accordance with the stated ambitions? Or, to put it in other words: have they been economically rational?

In a recent ECIPE Working Paper, scholars Andreas Freytag and Gernot Pehnelt study the dynamics of debt relief programmes and the determinants of their design. One of the key results from this research is the distinct difference between the actual design of debt relief initiatives and their ambitions.

You are cordially invited to a lunch seminar with Dr Andreas Freytag, Professor of Economics at the Friedrich Schiller University and a Senior Fellow of ECIPE. At the seminar Dr Freytag will present his research on the determinants of debt relief and discuss how debt relief programmes can be adjusted in order to improve their effectiveness.

RSVP: no later than February 6th to info@ecipe.org