Internationale Verschuldungskrisen, die Kreditvergabepolitik des IWF und Schuldner-Moral-Hazard : eine Analyse aus vertragstheoretischer Sicht

Abstract

Since the Russian debt crisis 1998, and particularly after the 2001 default episode in Argentina, questions related to sovereign bankruptcy have been increasingly at the forefront of policy discussions in emerging and transition economies. Much of the debates about international sovereign debt problems in the press as well as among experts have focused on the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). From a contract theoretical perspective the extensive liquidity provisions of the IMF during debt crises have been criticized to cause fundamental distortions and to promote negative incentives for the debtor country (debtor moral hazard) and the creditors (investor moral hazard). The purpose of the thesis is to concentrate on a formal analysis of issues on debtor moral hazard.The volume is divided into two parts. The first part starts with the proper identification of the main market failures between the original contracting parties, the debtor country and the international financial community. The existing contracting externalities and free-rider problems have important implications for the international financial architecture. In particular, we argue that they provide a role for a third player , for example an international organization such as the IMF, that helps to mitigate these frictions. Subsequently various theoretical models are discussed that develop an optimal mission design for the IMF based on the detected distortions. In these models the IMF s role is to substitute for the missing contracts between the sovereign and the individual foreign investor either in a new statutory bankruptcy regime for sovereigns or in implementing explicit seniority rules in privately held sovereign debt. These proposals for redesigning the IMF mean in particular that the Fund does not provide financial support during debt crises any longer. This is important because the present liquidity provision causes the debate about moral hazard.The second part starts with the argument that the beforehand discussed institutional implications of the market failure cannot be realized in the near or medium future even so these alternative mechanisms would be the optimal answer to the underlying distortions. Therefore the current procedure of IMF financial assistance to troubled economies will remain for the coming years. The question then is whether one can mitigate the moral hazard distortion using methods developed in microeconomics, especially in contract theory. After thoroughly summarizing the potential information asymmetries and negative incentives between all the involved agents during IMF financing, we review in detail the extensive principal-agent literature on debtor moral hazard and discuss critically the implications of the proposals. Much more promising than to develop punishment or disciplining strategies as an instrument of the IMF to prevent opportunistic defaults would be to scrutinize the conventional view on debtor moral hazard. Expected liquidity assistance gives a government not necessarily an incentive to avoid the costs of implementing socially desirable policies and to avoid a default. Recently developed theoretical models show, that it is also plausible to assume that under certain circumstances governments (of highly indebted countries) may be discouraged from implementing efficiency-enhancing but costly policies because the prospects of their success is jeopardized by the possibility of a default due to speculative runs. In such scenarios, IMF liquidity support enables the government to implement good policies by reducing liquidation costs in the event of a default. I.e official support can also act as an incentive for countries to follow good policies rather than reduce such incentives. We discuss formally the narrow limits of models assuming such a strategic complementarity between liquidity provision and good policies. At the same time we also acknowledge that the above argument contributes a lot to a new and interesting starting point in a broader discussion of moral hazard aspects. Since such approaches build on the main insights from the literature of global games, we show how these models contribute to the understanding how catalytic liquidity provision by an official institution can work to prevent a destructive speculative run.