This paper studies the risk and potential impact of system-wide defaults in a tiered banking network, where a small group of head institutions has many credit linkages with other banks, while the majority of banks have only a few links. A network is random and displays a given distribution of...

Periods of economic boom with rapid credit and GDP growth can be followed by sudden busts. In the presence of financial markets imperfections, a simple modification of a neoclassical growth model can fully account for this behavior. I study a growth model for a small open economy where...

A vast and growing empirical literature aims at identifying key determinants of sovereign default. The literature is extensive and controversial. Can policy-makers use this body of research to learn anything that can help reduce the likelihood of sovereign default? We use a variant of Extreme...

We study the effects of the adoption of collective action clauses (CACs) on government bond yields by exploiting secondary market data on sovereign bonds quoted in international markets from March 2007 to April 2011. CACs are assessed security by security. Using a panel data approach, we find a...

In a model of sovereign debt with endogenous default, we find a non-monotonic relationship between default risk and volatility, reflecting a trade-off between prudence and the insurance value of default. We show that this feature also holds in the data.

We present a dynamic and quantitative model of a fiscal solvency crisis in a monetary union. Diverse fiscal policies, which are subject to fiscal limits and stochastic shocks, can threaten a monetary union. The fiscal limits arise due to distortionary taxation and political will. Stochastic...

This paper analyses a small open economy that wants to borrow from abroad, cannot commit to repay debt but faces costs if it decides to default. The model generates analytical expressions for the impact of shocks on the incentive compatible level of debt. Debt reduction generated by severe...

The recent Eurozone debt crisis has witnessed sharp decouplings in cross-country bond yields without commensurate shifts in relative fundamentals. We rationalize this phenomenon in a model wherein countries with different fundamentals are on different equilibrium paths all along, but which...

We study the sovereign default model that has been used to account for the cyclical behavior of interest rates in emerging market economies. This model is often solved using the discrete state space technique with evenly spaced grid points. We show that this method necessitates a large number of...

Using a rich database of non-prime mortgages from New York City, we find that census tract level neighborhood characteristics are important predictors of default behavior, even after controlling for an extensive set of controls for loan and borrower characteristics. First, default rates increase...