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