Debt Buybacks, Debt Reduction, and Debt Rescheduling under Asymmetric Information
用多期债务积压模型证明，在信息不对称下，债务国用稀缺资源回购债务是债务策略从重新安排转向削减的自然结果，解释了布雷迪计划中这一争议性做法。
In the early nineties there was a significant recovery of many debtridden economies after the shift in debt policy implicit in the socalled Brady Plan. Yet, the use of scarce resources from debtor countries to buy back part of their debts remains a controversial feature of this Plan. We use a multiperiod model of debt overhang to show that, under asymmetric information, this transfer of resources emerges naturally as part of the shift from a strategy of debt rescheduling, to one of debt reduction. AFTER NEARLY A DECADE OF SUFFERING from debt-ridden economies, in the early nineties many countries with large external debts finally reduced their debt-service ratios, regained access to spontaneous private financing and achieved higher growth and lower inflation (IMF 1993). Many analysts have since attributed at least part of this success to the shift in the international debt strategy in 1989 which took a new direction with the so-called Brady initiative.l A rather controversial feature of this initiative was the use of scarce resources from the debtor countries to buy back part of their debt. There are two reasons why this use of a country's resources seems unwise. First, capital has more value in the debtor country than abroad. Thus, transferring additional current resources from the country to its creditors at fair prices would appear to be welfare reducing. Second, contrary to the idea that by repurchasing its debt in the open market a debtor country benefits from the discount price, Bulow and Rogoff (1988, 1991) prove under assumptions that include symmetric information that these buybacks hurt the country, since the purchase price2 incorporates (and transfers to the seller) all the benefits caused by a reduced debt.3