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Odious Debt In Retrospect, Daniel K. Tarullo
Odious Debt In Retrospect, Daniel K. Tarullo
Law and Contemporary Problems
In the eighty years since Alexander Sack coined the phrase "odious debt," academics and activists have periodically rediscovered Sack's idea, often arguing for its application or extension-to this point, in vain. Here, Tarullo reveals the degree to which current interest in the problem of odious debt is intertwined with other problems that strike more critically at the well-being of developing-and emerging-market countries. He reasons that the necessarily complex effort needed to institutionalize a doctrine of odious debt is a potentially effective organizing principle for generating the political will to address these other persistent, debilitating problems.
Partially Odious Debts?, Omri Ben-Shahar, Mitu Gulati
Partially Odious Debts?, Omri Ben-Shahar, Mitu Gulati
Law and Contemporary Problems
Ben-Shahar borrows from a rich private-law tradition to explore the treatment of odious debt as a problem analogous to allocation of liability in private law. Drawing on the economic analysis of private law, it develops insights as to the structure of an optimal liability scheme. Under this approach, liability is imposed not on the basis of some intrinsic judgment as to the parties' relative blameworthiness, but rather in a forward-looking fashion, on parties who are best suited to take actions to prevent the loss. In addition, liability is imposed on a magnitude tailored to induce an optimal level of precautionary …