The Transformative Potential of a Secondary Market: Emerging Markets Debt Trading from 1983 to 1989

This Article chronicles the evolution of the secondary market in the debt of less developed countries, now known as Emerging Markets, in its first six years of development. The secondary market was important because it provided the debt for use in debt-equity swaps and debt buy-backs and facilitated portfolio adjustment by banks and other measures that helped to lessen the burdens of the crisis on creditors and debtors. The Article goes through the chronology of the development of the Emerging Markets, emphasizing the key events and factors contributing to its development and the evolving characteristics of the market.