Valuing Interest Payment Guarantees on Developing Country Debt
This paper develops a technique to value guarantees on interest payments on developing-country debt, and provides some preliminary estimates of the cost of such guarantees. The cost of interest payment guarantees is not directly observable because a guarantee is a contingent obligation that becomes effective only if the debtor fails to make a certain payment. The strategy adopted in this paper is to estimate the market price that an interest payment guarantee would have if such a contract existed and were traded in financial markets. Using results from option pricing theory it is possible to calculate the price that an quot;interest guarantee contractquot; would carry in financial markets on the basis of the price of developing-country debt in secondary markets