對外 債務: 償還 能力 面에서 본 政策 比較

Abstract

This paper intends to compare policy responses to debt crisis in major debtor countries. Many differences in policy responces have been widely recognized between Korea and Latin American debtor countries. We restrict our attention to the way that these countries cope with the balance of payments difficulties arising from servicing the debt. We chose the foreign exchange earning ability as a indicator of 'capacity to repay'. If debt/export ratio decreases, we may say that the

capacity to pay improves. Starting with this premise, we derived a condition which warrants the non-deterioration of capacity to pay. And this condition permits us to conclude the followings. First, the difference between international interest rate and debtor countries' export growth rate is the key to dynamics of debt crisis. If the growth rate of export of borrowing countries remains well above the international interest rate, the debtor countries can support some current account deficits, as long as they are not very large, without deteriorating the capacity to repay. Second, the importance of export growth rate increases with debt/export ratio.

The implication of these conclusions is that, for the most severly indebted countries which have high debt/export ratio, it would be advantageous to pursue export driving strategies and to keep the export growth rate high. However, the major Latin American debtors opted for more handy solution of import restrictions and trade balance surpluses. It was very costly choice for the Latin Americans.