How the IMF did it--sovereign debt restructuring between 1970 and 1989

Jérôme Sgard ()
Additional contact information
Jérôme Sgard: CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: Between 1982 and 1989, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acted as a third-party in a total of 109 debt restructurings between 41 debtor states and their creditor banks. At the core of these restructurings was the old Stand-By Arrangement (SBA), ie the standard IMF instrument for conditional lending to member-countries. The SBA was thus transformed into a three-way, voluntary arrangement that de facto rested on a rule of mutual veto. This self-sustained, though largely ad hoc procedure depended on the systematic ignoring of all hard-law or contract-based rules that could have shaped the debt restructurings. This article analyses: (i) how this regime emerged through trial and error during the 1970s; and (ii) how it was implemented, accounted for and justified after the 1982 Mexican crisis.

Keywords: Debt restructuring; Sovereign debt; IMF; International law; Banks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03627457
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Capital Markets Law Journal, 2016, 11 (1), pp.103 - 125. ⟨10.1093/cmlj/kmv042⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03627457/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03627457

DOI: 10.1093/cmlj/kmv042

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().