This Technical paper presents the results of research carried out with the aim of defining and explaining how the debt crisis burden is shared between the different creditors. The interaction between creditors, which is seen primarily in this burden-sharing, is a phenomenon that has been unduly neglected by the analyses and the policies implemented since the beginning of the debt crisis.

The paper first shows how it is possible, at the price of a small number of simplifying analytical assumptions, to define and statistically measure burden-sharing among creditors. The proposed method is then applied to the data of a sample group of 28 countries for a 5 year period (1985-1989). The calculations lead to extremely clear results, according to which the burden has in recent years fallen mainly on official creditors and, among these, above all on the multilateral institutions.

The paper then goes on to throw light on the macroeconomic determinants of the burden borne by the ...