Assessing Bias and Accuracy in the World Bank-IMF's Debt Sustainability Framework for Low-Income Countries /
The World Bank and the IMF have adopted a debt sustainability framework (DSF) to evaluate the risk of debt distress in Low Income Countries (LICs). At the core of the DSF are empirically-based thresholds for each of five different measures of the debt burden (the 'debt threshold approach'...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Journal |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Washington, D.C. :
International Monetary Fund,
2014.
|
| Series: | IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ;
No. 2014/048 |
| Online Access: | Full text available on IMF |
| Summary: | The World Bank and the IMF have adopted a debt sustainability framework (DSF) to evaluate the risk of debt distress in Low Income Countries (LICs). At the core of the DSF are empirically-based thresholds for each of five different measures of the debt burden (the 'debt threshold approach' DTA). The DSF contains a rule for aggregating the information contained in these five different variables which we label the 'worst-case aggregator' (WCA) in view of the fact that the DSF considers a breach of any one of the thresholds sufficient to indicate a high risk of debt distress. However, neither the DTA nor the WCA has heretofore been subject to empirical testing. We find that: (1) the DTA loses information relative to a simple proposed alternative; (2) the WCA is too conservative (predicting crises too often) in terms of the loss function used in the DSF; and (3) the WCA is less accurate than some simple proposed alternative aggregators as a predictor of debt distress. |
|---|---|
| Item Description: | <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (39 pages) |
| Format: | Mode of access: Internet |
| ISSN: | 1018-5941 |
| Access: | Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students |