A lunch intercession provided time for networking and informal conversations about research trajectories and career development, followed by two afternoon panels. In the second panel, participants examined several facets of contemporary international political economy of sovereign debt, with particular attention to how governance structures, information constraints, and relationship-based leverage shape state behavior and bargaining outcomes.

• Dr. Aditi Sahasrabuddhe (Brown University) offered an account of governance fragmentation and highlighted the limits of financial statecraft when viewed from the vantage point of the Global South. Her remarks emphasized how overlapping institutions and uneven authority can dilute policy tools that are often assumed to be decisive in great-power competition.
• Dr. Zenobia Chan commended the paper’s careful empirical design while also highlighting important methodological considerations. In particular, she drew attention to potential concerns about endogeneity and the exclusion restriction underlying the model, and she encouraged the author to clarify the identifying assumptions and strengthen the accompanying robustness checks. Her intervention was especially valuable in pointing to practical ways the analysis could become even more persuasive and transparent to readers.
• Chong Wang (University of Western Ontario) explored hidden debt and endogenous sovereign debt disclosure under conditions of information asymmetry.
• Dr. Keren Zhu (Davidson College) commented on Wang’s paper and underscored how debt functions beyond simply a financial maneuver, but as a means of coalition-building linking developing-country politicians and Chinese actors. Her intervention highlighted the political uses of opacity and the distributional stakes embedded in disclosure decisions.
• Dr. Tomoko Takahashi (Kyoto University) presented work on relational ties with economic partners as assets in negotiation, including evidence of how such ties can influence bilateral trade behavior within the institutional setting of the WTO. Her talk emphasized that relationships can operate like resources—shaping credibility, expectations, and bargaining room in rule-governed environments.
• Dr. Margaret Pearson (University of Maryland) commented on Takahashi’s contribution and encouraged further conceptual refinement of “relational assets,” valuable resources you get from having a relationship with another actor, especially by clarifying how they operate inside multilateral institutions and specifying the observable behaviors (e.g., patterns of support, restraint, bargaining positions, or sequencing of concessions) that would indicate relational assets at work.

The final panel turned to international financial institutions and sovereign borrowing.

• Anthony Luongo (Emory University) presented research on how small states can exercise outsized influence through the International Monetary Fund Executive Board, showing how institutional access, procedural participation, and agenda-setting opportunities can translate into meaningful leverage even for countries with limited material power.
• Dr. Cleo O’Brien-Udry (University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign) noted that the proposed theory hinges on public perceptions of the IMF’s legitimacy and raised the possibility that having national leaders hold executive positions at the Fund might, in some contexts, undermine rather than bolster that legitimacy.
• Avi Ahuja (New York University) presented work on how Developing countries that have traditionally relied on foreign aid from Western donors to support government budgets choose substitutes when aid becomes less abundant. They theorize that politicians face threats to political survival when they lose access to foreign aid and prioritize financing substitutes with higher political benefits at the expense of high financial costs.
• Dr. Kevin P. Gallagher and Dr. Alexandra Zeitz offered supportive commentary, commending the paper’s strong theoretical intuition and policy relevance, and highlighting its value in bringing political survival dynamics into conversation with debates on aid retrenchment, lender competition, and the evolving landscape of sovereign finance. They advice authors’ attention on the alternative options of taxation and private finance beyond debt instrument as games of consideration for generating testable implications about which substitutes governments choose, under what conditions, and with what political and fiscal consequences.
• Mengfan Cheng (New York University) presented on how electoral cycles affect sovereign borrowing, particularly how impending elections can encourage governments to turn to bond markets.
• As the discussant, Dr. Cameron Ballard-Rosa (University of North Carolina) suggested that Cheng’s analysis would benefit from clearer specification of actors’ preferences and utility functions, as well as greater attention to how publics hold governments accountable for service provision rather than for borrowing per se.

As an inaugural mini conference, “Development Finance at a Crossroads” aimed to act as a starting point for a more coherent intellectual and professional space around development finance research. The day’s presentations and discussions underscored both the complexity and urgency of current challenges, while also pointing toward productive future directions—whether in the form of novel publications or simply through stronger networks and collaborations among the attending scholars.

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