How China Lends

Anna Gelpern and Christoph Trebesch--along with co-authors Sebastian Horn, Scott Morris, and Brad Parks--have produced a truly unprecedented study of a long-secret topic: the legal terms of the contracts governing loans by Chinese state-owned entities to borrower governments around the world. How China Lends (link below) documents a variety of innovative and unexpected contracting practices that straddle the border between "official" and "private" lending (and maybe reveal the uselessness of trying to maintain that distinction?). Anna and Christoph join us to talk about their findings, which not only shed light on the practices of Chinese lenders but offer a new model for the study of contracts generally.

The paper is available here: https://www.aiddata.org/publications/how-china-lends

Producer: Leanna Doty