We study sovereign external debt crises over the past 200 years, with a focus on creditor losses, or "haircuts". Our sample covers 327 sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors over 205 default spells since 1815. Creditor losses vary widely (from none to 100%), but the...

Bank distress was a defining feature of the Great Depression in the United States. Most banks, however, weathered the storm and remained in operation throughout the contraction. We show that surviving banks cut lending when depositors withdrew funds en masse during panics. This panic-induced...

This paper surveys the recent empirical literature on historical banking crises, defined as events taking place before 1980. Advances in data collection and identification have provided new insights into the causes and consequences of crises both immediately and over the long run. We highlight...

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...

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...

An emerging new literature brings unique ideas from corporate finance to the study of international trade and investment. Insights about differences in the development of financial institutions across countries, the role of financial constraints, and the use of internal capital markets are...

Firms in developing countries cite credit constraints as one of their primary obstacles to investment. Direct foreign investment, by bringing in scarce capital, may ease domestic firms' credit constraints. Alternatively, if foreign firms borrow heavily from domestic banks, they may exacerbate...

How should governments structure primary sovereign bond markets when investors face asymmetric uncertainty about default risk and total demand? Standard protocols either use uniform prices for all investors, or price discriminate based on bid prices ("pay as bid"). Uniform pricing encourages...

How reliable are public debt statistics? This paper quantifies the magnitude, characteristics, and timing of hidden debt by tracking ex post data revisions across a comprehensive new database of more than 50 vintages of World Bank debt statistics. In a sample of debt data covering 146 countries...

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...