In this paper, we introduce the first comprehensive database on sovereign debt systematically compiled to ensure comparability, for all countries in the Americas, and use this new data to highlight the main stylized facts regarding sovereign debt for developing America in the last two decades....

Recent crises in emerging markets call into question the effectiveness of market discipline for ensuring efficient foreign borrowing. We review arguments that indicate that market discipline is limited by lack of information and may be dangerously distorted by moral hazard induced by official...