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...

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...