In this webinar, we explore the diversity of means by which governments borrow from commercial banks, sovereign bond issues, social bilateral creditors, and multilateral financial institutions. Although political economy scholars tend to analyze financing instruments in isolation from one another, governments make choices across borrowing instruments. Although these choices partly reject governments’ macroeconomic polices and country creditworthiness, they also reject governments’ efforts to engage in financial statecraft, often for domestic reasons. These motivations include transparency: governments that are inclined not to make available information about the state of their economy and financial institutions will, all else equal, tend to borrow from commercial banks (versus to issue bonds), or to borrow from social bilateral creditors (rather than multilateral ones). Borrowing from these entities imposes fewer disclosure requirements, and disclosures are made to a narrower audience. We test, and and support for, our hypotheses using data on the composition of government debt over time, for a large set of developing countries. We further assess, and again and support for, our expectations using data on the borrowing behavior of Mexican municipalities. Peter Rosendorff is a Professor of Politics at New York University with an affiliate appointment at NYU-Abu Dhabi. He is an editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Economics and Politics, and has served as an editorial board member of American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Politics and International Interactions. Previously he was the Director of the Center for International Studies and Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He has held grants from the National Science Foundation, and the Japan Foundation, among others.
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