Governments issue debt both domestically and abroad. This heterogeneity introduces the possibility for governments to operate selective defaults that discriminate across investors. Using a novel dataset on the legal jurisdiction of sovereign defaults that distinguishes between defaults under...

Sovereign debt crises are difficult to solve. This paper studies the "holdout problem", meaning the risk that creditors refuse to participate in a debt restructuring. We document a large variation in holdout rates, based on a comprehensive new dataset of 23 bond restructurings with external...

This paper examines how domestic holdings of government debt affect sovereign default risk and government debt management. I develop a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with both external and domestic debt that endogenously generates output contraction upon default. Domestic holdings...

The paper discusses global imbalances under the aspect of an asymmetric world monetary system. It identifies the US and Germany as center countries with rising / high current account deficits (US) and surpluses (Germany). These are matched by current account surpluses of countries stabilizing...

Government debt and forecasts thereof attracted considerable attention during the recent financial crisis. The current paper analyzes potential biases in different U.S. government agencies' one-year-ahead forecasts of U.S. gross federal debt over 1984-2012. Standard tests typically fail to...