Why Do Emerging Economies Borrow in Foreign Currency? The Role of Exchange Rate Risk

Borrowing in foreign currency has historically induced a large currency mismatch on emerging economies' balance sheets, leading to financial instability and economic crises. Nonetheless, emerging market sovereigns still borrow a substantial amount in foreign currency. In fact, in this paper, we find empirically that emerging market sovereigns borrow even more in foreign currency when exchange rate volatility is higher, precisely when it is riskier for them to do so. This paper builds a quantitative sovereign default model with a risk-averse sovereign and risk-averse international investors, where the optimal currency composition of external sovereign borrowing is the outcome of a risk-sharing problem between the borrower and lenders. Emerging economies choose to bear exchange rate risk and borrow in foreign currency because international investors charge a high exchange rate risk premium on emerging market local currency debt. Moreover, the required premium on local currency debt is higher when exchange rate volatility increases, further dissuading emerging economies from borrowing in local currency. The estimated model with high risk aversion of lenders quantitatively matches well the foreign exchange risk premium, the relative borrowing cost in local currency over foreign currency, and the currency composition of external public debt. The model also performs well quantitatively in accounting for positive comovements between the foreign currency share of external public debt and exchange rate volatility, and the relative borrowing cost in local currency over foreign currency and exchange rate volatility. A counter-factual exercise shows that exchange rate stabilization results in a welfare gain to the emerging market sovereign of 0.35% measured in consumption equivalents