The dynamics of development of the international rules in the officially supported export credit: OECD Consensus

Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) have been founded as a tool for governments to support national companies in the export business and enhance the economy's capacity to penetrate foreign markets. For this reason, ECAs have been the main promoters of national politics for providing coverage against commercial and non-commercial risks of export transactions in the form of direct loans, refinancing, interest rate support, export-credit insurance, or loan guarantees. Over the past two decades, subsidized trade finance has been one of the most widely used instruments of export promotion. This article offers an unique view of the success of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Export Credit Arrangement, or the so called 'OECD Consensus', which was primarily created to remove governments subsidies and let the exporters compete on the price and quality of the exports and the service the offer, rather than on the basis of the volume and quality of the support they receive from their governments. It also analyzes the ways in which such Arrangement, the 'gentlemen's agreement', based on transparency and peer review, can represent an excellent example of how the OECD approach of 'soft law' can really work in practice and regulate the wide spectrum of official international export credit programmes.