External Finance and Adjustment : Failure and Success in the Developing World

This book studies the impact of different sources of external finance on growth and development in different country contexts. An important finding of the study is that success or failure in the productive use of external and domestic financial resources cannot be explained on the basis of single factors such as external shocks or bad versus sound policies. Rather, they are outcomes of complex interactions between changes in exogenous factors (such as fluctuations in external finance and trade shocks), existing economic structures and the responses to shocks by domestic public and private sector agents. This finding also implies that there are no recipes in economic policy-making which are generally applicable; the best policy has to be designed specifically for each country.