In this essay we review the empirical literature about sovereign debt and default. As we survey the work of economists, historians, and political scientists, we also emphasize parallel developments by theorists and recommend steps to improve the correspondence between theory and data

We develop a multicountry model in which default in one country triggers default in other countries. Countries are linked to one another by borrowing from and renegotiating with common lenders with concave payoffs. A foreign default increases incentives to default at home because it makes new...

We provide a comparison of salient organizational features of primary markets for foreign government debt over the very long run. We focus on output, quality control, information provision, competition, pricing, charging, and signaling. We find that the market setup experienced a radical...

Two general approaches have been offered for dealing with the developing country debt crisis: continued reliance on case-by-case negotiation, versus global plans for fundamentally restructuring the terms of international lending and repayment. Both approaches have precedents in earlier...

The most widely proposed LDC debt plans are flawed by their failure to recognize the fundamental differences between corporate and sovereign debt. Consequently, many plans intended to help highly-indebted countries mainly aid their foreign creditors. This paper emphasizes the crucial distinction...