Review: International Economics: External Debt Management
| Published date | 01 December 1986 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070208604100416 |
| Date | 01 December 1986 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
898
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
through
foreign
policy
that
the
United
States
exercises
its
most
per-
vasive,
effective,
and
significant economic
influence,
but
through
its
domestic
policies.
It
is
these
which,
far more
than
those of
any
other
single
state,
shape and
define the
global
market
for
technology,
for
finance,
for
the
production
and
trade
in
goods
and
services,
and
which
is
the
context
within
which
the
governments
of
other
states
must
strive
to
compete.
That
is
the
economic
statecraft
that
really
matters
and
which,
in
the
long
run,
has
the
most
power
to
enhance
or
to
set
at
risk
the
security
of
an
insecure
world.
Susan
Strange/London
School
of
Economics
&
Political
Science
EXTERNAL DEBT
MANAGEMENT
Edited
by
Hassanali
Mehran
Washington
DC:
International
Monetary
Fund,
1985,
x,
322pp,
us$17.50
cloth,
us$11.50
paper
This
volume
collects
papers presented
at
a
seminar
organized
by
the
IMF
in
December
1984
on
the
institutional
and
operational
aspects
of
external
debt
management.
The
problem
is
an
extremely
important
one,
since
the
debt
crisis
is
at
least
in
part
the
result
of
lack
of
infor-
mation
and
failures
of
management.
Commercial banks
frequently
lent without
full
knowledge
of
the
extent
of
a
country's external
in-
debtedness. Central
bankers
and
finance
ministers
were
also
often
in
the
dark
and
lacked
the
instruments
of
control
required
to
pursue
a
rational
borrowing
policy.
As
the
essays
suggest,
the
successful
management
of
the
debt
crisis
is
not
solely
an
international
issue,
but
will
hinge
on
strengthening
statistical,
analytic,
accounting, and
bargaining
practices
in
the
bor-
rowers
themselves. Jos6
Angel
Gurria
provides
a
particularly
inter-
esting
review
of
borrowing
tactics
and
strategy
from
a
developing
country
viewpoint,
while
Clifford
Evans
offers
a
useful
overview
of
rescheduling
from
the
bankers'
side
of
the
table.
A
number
of
essays
discuss
the
institutional prerequisites
for
coherent
national
policy.
Four
essays
examine
the
multilateral institutions,
including efforts
to
standardize
the
collection
of
information
on
indebtedness.
External debt management
cannot
be
divorced
from
the
broader
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