In 2007, countries in the euro periphery were enjoying stable growth, low deficits and low spreads. Then the financial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recession, raising their deficits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and, surprisingly,...

Sovereign debt restructurings do constitute a recurrent phenomenon in emerging and developing economies. Consequently, the international community has repeatedly explored options to increase the predictability and orderliness of debt workouts, of which the debate on the Sovereign Debt...

This paper analyzes the role played by the IMF in eight recent sovereign debt restructurings from a comparative perspective: Argentina (2001-2005), the Dominican Republic (2004-2005), Ecuador (1999-2000), Pakistan (1998-2001), the Russian Federation (1998-2001), Serbia (2000-2004), Ukraine...

This paper provides a set of stylised facts on the mechanisms through which banking and sovereign distress feed into each other, using a large sample of emerging economies over three decades. We first define “twin crises” as events where banking crises and sovereign defaults combine, and...

The sovereign debt crisis in the euro area has raised interest in early warning indicators, aimed at signalling the build-up of fiscal stress in advance and helping prevent crises by means of a timely counteraction of fiscal and macroeconomic policies. This paper presents possible improvements...

This paper looks at whether the tendency of some governments to borrow short term is reinforced by financial support from the International Monetary Fund. I first present a model of sovereign debt issuance at various maturities featuring endogenous liquidity crises and maturity mismatches due to...

Using empirical analysis, complemented with case studies, this paper studies under which circumstances IMF programs manage to catalyze private capital flows into the countries concerned. While we found no catalysis in general, the situation differs very much depending on the type of capital flow...

This paper proposes updating and improving the IMF’s lending mechanism, by replacing all of its credit lines with a single financial facility. Under this single facility, costs would rise with the volume drawn down and the time elapsed. At the same time, arrangement and repayment periods would...

The role that domestic and international financial conditions have in shaping developing countries’ governments’ debt structure is structurally estimated using data on individual bond issuance. The structural model, which uses financial and demographic conditions to achieve identification,...