Debt Games: Strategic Interaction in International Debt Rescheduling

Description

This book explains the significant variation that has emerged over time and across cases in international debt rescheduling during the past one hundred and seventy years. Based on a novel situational theory of bargaining, Professor Aggarwal's study provides a method to deduce actors' payoffs in different bargaining situations to develop "debt games," which are then used to predict negotiating outcomes. This integrated political-economic approach to analyze bargaining episodes goes beyond simple economic models or purely descriptive studies. In doing so, it contributes to international political and economic theory, game theory, and historical research on debt negotiations.

"Combining rich historical detail with an innovative and broad ranging application of game theory, Aggarwal has brought penetrating new insight to the old issue of international debt negotiation. Nowhere will a reader find a more rewarding analysis of the strategic interaction between troubled debtors and their creditors. This is must reading for anyone interested in the complexities of international bargaining." Benjamin J. Cohen, University of California, Santa Barbara "Aggarwal's Debt Games provides an ambitious mapping of the empirical reality of international debt rescheduling into simple normal game models. His 'situational theory' goes well beyond standard case study methods through a greater specificity that allows him to achieve an impressive level of postdiction over a wide range of cases using only a few simple assumptions. And his candor about the limits of the assumptions and his predictions is both refreshing and illuminating. The result is an analysis that pioneers an innovative strategy for combining theory and evidence while helping us better understand debt rescheduling." Duncan Snidal, The University of Chicago "Debt Games is an ambitious and enlightening study of debt negotiations involving Latin American countries over a period of more than 150 years. Vinod Aggarwal systematically uses a strategic interaction model as the basis for a comparative analysis of debt negotiations, drawing on a vast range of empirical material to understand the sources of strategies. Debt Games will be rewarding reading for students of international and comparative political economy." Robert O. Keohane, Harvard University "It is well balanced, with a nice mix of abstract concepts, real world indicators, and empirical richness that goes beyond illustrative case studies. I have no doubt that one could make a different set of trade-offs between theoretical complexity and empirical applicability. But this impressive book should serve as a useful banchmark for years to come. Scholars and graduate students alike will find it to be a valuable source of modeling ideas that goes well beyond the examination of international debt rescheduling." Cedric Dupont, American political review