This book explains the significant variation that has emerged over time and across cases in international debt rescheduling during the last one hundred and seventy years. Based on a novel situational theory of bargaining, Professor Aggarwal provides a method to deduce actors' payoffs in different bargaining situations to develop 'debt games' which are then used to predict negotiating outcomes.

'Combining rich historical detail with an innovative and broad ranging application of game theory, Aggarwal has brought penetrating new insight to the old issue of international debt negotiation. Nowhere will a reader find a more rewarding analysis of the strategic interaction between troubled debtors and their creditors. This is must reading for anyone interested in the complexities of international bargaining.'-Benjamin J. Cohen University of California, Santa Barbara