This article surveys the literature on sovereign debt sustainability from its origins in the mid-1980s to the present, focusing on four debates. First, the shift from an "accounting based" view of debt sustainability, evaluated using government borrowing rates, to a "model based" view which uses...

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 study gains from introducing a common numerical fiscal rule in a "Union" of model economies facing sovereign default risk. We show that among economies in the Union, there is significant disagreement about the common debt limit the Union should implement: the limit preferred by some economies...

This paper documents and analyzes crisis-related changes in government debt issuance practices in the 16 euro zone countries and Denmark. Using a newly constructed database on primary market debt issuance during 2007-09, we find evidence of a shift away from pre-crisis standards of best funding...

Public and private sector balance sheets are an important component to any analysis of debt sustainability. A vulnerable and indebted private sector can become a sudden liability for the government; alternatively, resilient household and bank balance sheets may reveal potential sources of...

Sovereign debt restructurings are perceived as inflicting large losses to bondholders. However, many bonds feature high coupons and often exhibit strong post-crisis recoveries. To account for these aspects, we analyze the long-term returns of sovereign bonds during 32 crises since 1998, taking...

The World Bank and the IMF have adopted a debt sustainability framework (DSF) to evaluate the risk of debt distress in Low Income Countries (LICs). At the core of the DSF are empirically-based thresholds for each of five different measures of the debt burden (the “debt threshold approach”...