While the use of public resources is critical to cushion the impact of the financial crisis on the euro-area economy, it is key that the entailed fiscal costs not be seen by markets as undermining fiscal sustainability. From this perspective, to what extent do movements in euro area sovereign...

We update the widely used banking crises database by Laeven and Valencia (2008, 2010) with new information on recent and ongoing crises, including updated information on policy responses and outcomes (i.e. fiscal costs, output losses, and increases in public debt). We also update our dating of...

Recent events have shown that sovereigns, just like banks, can be subject to runs, highlighting the importance of the investor base for their liabilities. This paper proposes a methodology for compiling internationally comparable estimates of investor holdings of sovereign debt. Based on this...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. EVOLUTION OF SOVEREIGN DEBT LEVELS -- A. Evolution of Debt Levels in the Immediate Post-Crisis Period -- B. Evidence on Debt Reversals -- C. External Debt versus Domestic Debt -- III. CHANGES IN THE STRUCTURE OF SOVEREIGN DEBT -- A. External Public...

The financial crisis that began in 2007 has brought to the fore the issues of excesses in lending, leverage, and risk-taking as some of the fundamental causes of this crisis. At the same time, in dealing with the financial crisis there have been large scale interventions by governments, often...

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950-2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and...

We examine how the cost of corporate credit varies around fiscal consolidations aimed at reducing government debt. Using a new dataset on fiscal consolidations and syndicated corporate loan data, we find that loan spreads increase with fiscal consolidations, especially for small firms, domestic...

Using a panel of 30 emerging market economies from 1997 to 2007, this paper investigates the determinants of country risk premiums as measured by sovereign bond spreads. Unlike previous studies, the results indicate that both fiscal and political factors matter for credit risk in emerging...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK -- III. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS OF THE CROSS-COUNTRY STUDY -- IV. APPLICATION TO JAMAICA -- V. POLICY IMPLICATIONS -- VI. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS -- A. DATA SOURCES AND DEFINITIONS AND COUNTRY GROUPING -- B. DEBT-INFLATION TRAP AND DEBT...

Intro -- Contents -- I. MOTIVATION -- II. HISTORICAL EVIDENCE ON DEFAULT AND LENDING RESUMPTION -- III. THE ENVIRONMENT -- IV. OBSERVABLE TYPES -- V. UNOBSERVABLE TYPES -- VI. CONCLUDING REMARKS -- PROOFS OF PROPOSITIONS 3 AND 4 -- REFERENCES.