We show that, under fairly general conditions, lending to small countries must be supported by the direct sanctions available to creditors, and cannot be supported by a country's "reputation for repayment." This distinction is critically important for understanding the true underlying structure of sovereign lending contracts, and comparing policy alternatives for dealing with the developing country debt problem.

We present a dynamic model of international lending in which borrowers cannot commit to future repayments and in which debtors can sometimes successfully negotiate partial defaults or "rescheduling agreements." All parties in a debt rescheduling negotiation realize that today's rescheduling agreement may itself have to be renegotiated in the future. Our bargaining-theoretic approach allows us to handle the effects of uncertainty on sovereign debt contracts in a much more satisfactory way than in earlier analyses. The framework is readily extended to analyze the conflicting interest of different lenders and of banks and creditor country taxpayers.

Few sovereign debtors have repudiated their obligations entirely. But despite the significant sanctions at the disposal of lenders, many borrowers have been able to consistently negotiate for reduced repayments. This paper presents a model of the on-going bargaining process that determines repayment levels.