This paper investigates the implications of international financial sanctions for the reserve currency status of the US dollar. We propose a simple model of a reserve currency, demonstrate how the anticipation of financial sanctions can weaken the dollar's status, and evaluate the welfare...

This paper studies the impact of investor composition on the sovereign debt market and the implied funding costs to borrowers. We construct an aggregate data set of sovereign debt holdings by foreign and domestic bank, non-bank private, and official investors for 95 countries over twenty years....

When available financial securities allow investors to optimally diversify risk across countries, standard theory implies that exchange rates should reflect this behavior. However, exchange rates observed in the data deviate from these predictions. In this paper, we develop a framework to value...

This paper develops a framework to study the management of international reserves when a government faces the risk of a rollover crisis. In the model, it is optimal for the government to reduce its vulnerability by initially lowering debt, and then increasing both debt and reserves as it...

Emerging economies that are large oil producers have sizable external debt, their country risk rises when oil prices fall, and several of them have defaulted at least once since 1979. Moreover, while oil and non-oil output reduce country risk on impact and in the long-run, oil reserves reduce it...

Many central banks whose exchange rate regimes are classified as flexible are reluctant to let the exchange rate fluctuate. This phenomenon is known as "fear of floating". We present a simple theory in which fear of floating emerges as an optimal policy outcome. The key feature of the model is...

We explore the role of sectoral debt dynamics in shaping business cycles in a sample of 52 Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and Frontier Market Economies (FMEs) from 2005 to 2021. Higher household debt levels and growth are associated with significantly slower GDP growth in more developed EMEs...

Emerging countries exhibit volatile fiscal policies and frequent sovereign debt crises, that significantly diminish the well-being of their citizens. International advisors typically suggest developed-world solutions as a remedy. We argue that the root of the problem lies in the institutional...

We develop a theory of information spillovers in sovereign bond markets in which investors can acquire information about default risk before trading in primary and secondary markets. If primary markets are structured as multi-unit discriminatory-price auctions, an endogenous winner's curse leads...

Foreign investors' changing appetite for risk-taking have been shown to be a key determinant of the global financial cycle. Such fluctuations in risk sentiment also correlate with the dynamics of UIP premia, capital flows, and exchange rates. To understand how these risk sentiment changes...