Introduction to volume 1. Part 1 Context - origins and development ofthe international debt crisis: debt and default in the 1930s - causes and consequences, B. Eichengreen, R. Portes; the debt-bomb threat, J. Palmer; the debt crisis - a longer perspective, A. Fishlow; the international debt situation and north-south relations, F. Stewart; Third World debt - the bomb is defused, G. Hector; the political geography of international lending by private banks, D.W. Fryer; the US trade and budget deficits in global perspective, S.E. Corbridge, J. Agnew; Third World debt - the disaster that didn't happen, W.R. Rhodes; the Mexican peso crisis, S. Griffith-Jones. Part 2 Context -regional studies: alternative outcomes of the Latin American debt crisis - lessons from the past, D. Felix; the social time-bomb, J. Roddick; the Brazilian borrowing experience - from miracle to debacle and back, J. Frieden; economic crisis, adjustment and living standards in Mexico, 1982-1985, N. Lustig; Mexico - stabilization, reform and no growth, R. Dornbusch, A. Werner; the external debt difficulties of low-income Africa, C. Humphreys, J. Underwood; the increase in death and disease under "katastroika", M. Ellman; the political economy of the Philippine debt crisis, S. Haggard. Part 3 Context - banks and institutions: the origins of the crisis 2 - the supply of credit, H. Lever, C. Huhne; the US commercial banks and the developing-country debt crisis, J. Sachs, H. Huizinga; bankers' dilemmas - private cooperation in rescheduling sovereign debts, C. Lipson; the politics of economic stabilization - IMF standby programs in Latin America, 1954-1984, K. Remmer.