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A more sober assessment of the Bolivian buy-back reveals that commercial bank creditors probably reaped
most of the benefit. Before the buy-back, banks expected to receive a total of $40,2 million (.06 × $670 mil-
lion). After the buy-back, banks had collected $34 million and their expected future repayments were still $39,8
million (.11 × $362 million). How did creditors manage to reap such a large share of the benefits? Basically,
when a country is as deep in hock as Bolivia was, creditors attach a far greater likelihood to partial repayment
than to full repayment. Having the face value of the debt halved did little to reduce the banks' bargaining lever-
age with Bolivia, and the chances that the canceled debt would have eventually been paid were low anyway.
Similar problems can arise even in countries whose debt sells at much smaller discounts.
The fact that buy-backs tend to bid up debt prices presents difficulties for any plan in which funds taken
from taxpayers in industrialized countries are used to promote debt restructurings that supposedly are for the
sole benefit of people in the debtor countries. Banks will surely know of the additional resources available for
repayment, and they will try to bargain for higher repayments and lower rollovers. The main focus of the Brady
Plan is precisely to ensure that the lion's share of officially donated funds reaches debtors. But the fact that debt
prices have been stronger in countries that have implemented Brady Plans than in non-Brady Plan countries
suggests that the effort to limit the gain for banks has been only partially successful.
Aside from the question of such "leakage" to private banks, there are serious equity concerns with any at-
tempt to channel large quantities of aid relief to deal with private debt. Though poor by standards of Europe and
the United States, countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina rank as middle to upper-middle income in
the broader world community. The average per capita income in the seventeen HICs was $1,430 in 1987. This
compares with $470 in developing East Asia and $290 in South Asia. Even Bolivia, South America's basket
case, has twice the per capita income of India. On a need basis, therefore, Africa and South Asia are stronger
candidates for aid.
UNEMPLOYMENT
By Lawrence H. Summers
Few economic indicators are of more concern to Americans than unemployment statistics. Reports that un-
employment rates are dropping make us happy; reports to the contrary make us anxious. But just what do un-
employment figures tell us? Are they reliable measures? What influences joblessness?
Each month, the federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics randomly surveys sixty thousand indi-
viduals around the nation. If respondents say they are both out of work and seeking employment, they are
counted as unemployed members of the labor force. Jobless respondents who have chosen not to continue look-
ing for work are considered out of the labor force and therefore are not counted as unemployed. Almost half of
all unemployment spells end because people leave the labor force. Ironically, those who drop out of the labor
force – whether because they are discouraged, have household responsibilities, or are sick – actually make un-
employment rates look better; the unemployment rate includes only people within the labor force who are out
of work.
Not all unemployment is the same. Unemployment can be long- or short-term. It can be frictional, meaning
someone is between jobs. Or it may be structural, as when someone's skills are no longer demanded because of
a change in technology or an industry downturn.
Some say there are reasons to think that unemployment in the United States is not a big problem. In 1991,
32,8 per cent of all unemployed people were under the age of twenty-four and presumably few of these were
the main source of income for their families. One out of six of the unemployed are teenagers. Moreover, the
average duration of a spell of unemployment is short. In 1991 it was 13,8 weeks. And the median spell of un-
employment is even shorter. In 1991 it was 6,9 weeks, meaning that half of all spells last 6,9 weeks or less.
On the basis of numbers like the above, many economists have thought that unemployment is not a very
large problem. A few weeks of unemployment seems to them like just enough time for people to move from
one job to another. Yet these numbers, though accurate, are misleading. Much of the reason why unemployment
spells appear short is that many workers drop out of the labor force at least temporarily because they cannot
find attractive jobs. Often two short spells of unemployment mean a long spell of joblessness because the per-
son was unemployed for a short time, then withdrew from the labor force, and then reentered the labor force.
And even if most unemployment spells are short, most weeks of unemployment are experienced by people
who are out of work for a long time. To see why, consider the following example. Suppose that each week,
twenty spells of unemployment lasting one week begin, and only one begins that lasts twenty weeks. Then the
average duration of a completed spell of unemployment would be only 1,05 weeks. But half of all unemploy-
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