"The episode shows how developing countries are stuck between two undesirable options for development financing, Souvannaseng said. With long-term, low-cost multilateral lenders like the World Bank, she said, the “the bureaucratic process … to get money — it’s long, it’s tedious, a lot of them find it very humiliating.” But the “high risk, high reward” international bond market, while a quick source of money, “is first and foremost concerned with yield, not with developmental aims,” she said."

My article manuscript, ‘Fast Finance & the Political Economy of Catastrophic Dam Collapse in Lao PDR’ is now out in Pacific Affairs Vol. 97, Issue..

I was recently quoted in a CNN article on the Chinese built Lao railway, accessible here: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/25/travel/china-south-east-asia-travel-train-infrastructure-intl-hnk CategoriesNews