>How about my notion that defaults on this loans were an important
contributor
>to US development, by removing the need to run a current account surplus
to
>service the debts? Right, wrong, exaggerated?
dunno. Brad DeLong almost certainly knows.
But for the general case, I remember an article by Barry Eichengreen which certainly established that during the bond defaults of the 1930s, countries enjoyed a measurable gain in economic welfare from defaulting (ie those that defaulted did better than those that didn't). He also wrote something (it sez 'ere) called "Financing Infrastructure in Developing Countries: Lessons from the Railway Age" which might give you the answer. Refs from
http://haas.berkeley.edu/groups/iber/wps/econabs.html
dd
DANIEL.DAVIES at flemings.com wrote:
> >(and
> >was funded almost entirely by European
> >financiers until late in the century).
> >
>
> As an employee of the company formerly known as Robert Fleming's Scottish
> American Investment Trust, I can vouch for this point, but no others.
>
> dd
>
>
-- Enrique Diaz-Alvarez Office # (607) 255 5034 Electrical Engineering Home # (607) 272 4808 112 Phillips Hall Fax # (607) 255 4565 Cornell University mailto:enrique at ee.cornell.edu Ithaca, NY 14853 http://peta.ee.cornell.edu/~enrique
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