Standstills and an international bankruptcy court
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Date
2002-10
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Abstract
Recent proposals call for the establishment of an international bankruptcy court that would adjudicate debt disputes between sovereign debtors and their creditors. One component of the operation of such an institution would be the declaration, under circumstances deemed appropriate, of a standstill preventing lenders from forcing payment of debt.Such a proposal would bring the enforcement and information aggregation powers of a judicial body to international capital markets. A benefit would be the greater transparency, power, and legitimacy of such an institution and its procedures relative to the the national judicial systems now charged with overseeing sovereign debt problems. But there is also a danger that such an institution could exacerbate problems between debtors and creditors. By reducing creditors capacity to extract repayment such an institution could ultimately worsen the credit terms available to sovereigns. Another problem, also present in the current system, is that public funds might be used to bailout both private creditors and debtors. Tow suggestions for mitigating such problems are (i) escrow accounts that would be transferred from debtor to creditor in the event of a standstill and (ii) an experience-rated tax to finance official lending
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International bankruptcy, Economic growth