stabilization exercises and the conditions it imposes for access to credit ... it serves a useful political function as a scapegoat" (Maddison, 1985, p. 81).
In the 1960s, the general worldwide view of development prospects had been optimistic. In the 1970s and 1980s, optimism was checked by a series of interacting shocks: rising energy costs, inflation in the industrialized countries, debt crises in the Third World as growth failed to meet the expectations on which foreign loans had been predicated. The degree of difficult varied widely by region, however, and tended to be consistant with the subjective picture drawn above.
The following table of debt and development patterns, mostly from East Asian or Latin American countries, is taken from Table 1.2 in Sachs (1989, p. 4):
GDP Inflation Commod. D/Ex Refi.
Argentina -1.4 342.8 82 576 Yes
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