International regulation of official trade finance : competition and collusion in export credits and foreign aid

Advanced industrial countries provide over $120 billion annually on various terms and conditions to support exports and investments abroad. The regime governing these official trade finance (OTF) flows has puzzling features. The legal basis of the regime, officially known as the Arrangement on Guidelines for Officially Supported Export Credits (Arrangement), is ambiguous. Its proceedings are secret. Its membership is restricted to a relatively small number of states. Finally, some sectors and modes of finance are more tightly regulated than are others. Some are not regulated at all. My research goal was not only to explain the unusual institutional features and scope of the regime as it currently stands, but also to explain why this regime emerged. I argue that the Arrangement is best understood as a cartel comprised of the leading suppliers of state- backed trade finance. Supplier states comprise the rich industrial countries that "produce" official export finance or "give" foreign aid to finance the exports of capital goods, military equipment and agricultural products sought by buyer states. Buyer states are generally developing countries, which have limited ability to pay in cash or self finance these imports.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Evans, Peter C

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kenneth A. Oye.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/33684

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/33684