This paper estimates bond-by-bond “haircuts”—realized investor losses—in recent debt restructurings in Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, Ecuador, Argentina, and Uruguay. We consider both external and domestic retructurings. Haircuts are computed as the percentage difference between the present...

The existence of sovereign debt relies on the ability of creditors to impose costs on defaulting debtors. In their seminal contribution Eaton and Gersovitz (1981) began the modern literature on sovereign debt by assuming that creditors could not impose sanctions but could exclude debtor...