I analyze how lack of commitment affects the maturity structure of sovereign debt. Ex post, the government trades off the gains from default induced redistribution against the cost of defaulting. Ex ante, the government issues debt of various maturities to raise an exogenous revenue requirement....

Can the international financial system be reformed to reduce the costs of sovereign defaults? What would the consequences of such ex post reforms be on the ex ante level of sovereign borrowing? This paper presents a simple model in which sovereign debt restructuring negotiations are plagued by...

We empirically analyse the appropriateness of indexing emerging market sovereign debt to US real interest rates. We find that policy-induced exogenous increases in US rates raise default risk in emerging market economies, as hypothesised in the theoretical literature. However, we also find...