More than 20 developing countries do not publish any data on their sovereign debt. In those that do disclose data, public debt statistics usually do not comply with international standards in terms of coverage and definitions. Some information can be deduced through indirect disclosure of debt...

The paper presents the policymakers perspective on the reforms undertaken to manage states debt and ensure solvency. While the sustained high growth rates of the Indian economy played a part in alleviating the interest burden on debt and ensuring that the debt does not grow in an explosive...

This paper relaxes some key assumptions in the probabilistic approach to fiscal sustainability. First, the authors identify structural breaks over the sample period used to estimate the covariance matrix of the shocks to the debt ratios. Second, the assumption of normality of the shocks is...

This paper acknowledges the fact that some countries have to borrow in foreign currencies due to the various constraints they face. Starting from this point, the author reviews approaches for trying to determine the currency structure for sovereign debt, and discusses some issues inherent in...

This paper analyzes results of a survey on debt management strategies conducted by the Banking and Debt Management Department of the World Bank. The analysis focuses on (1) whether a public debt management strategy exists in a given country, (2) whether it is made public, and (3) in which form...

This paper proposes a sovereign asset and liability management framework for analyzing the inter-relationships between debt management, fiscal and monetary policies. It illustrates the consequences of uncoordinated policy mix and extends Sargent and Wallace (1981 and 1993) by including debt...

Despite significant progress in economic reform throughout the 1990s, and an exemplary development of the policymaking framework in the second part of the decade, Brazil suffered a major public debt and currency crisis in 2002. Though the political origin of the uncertainty cannot be ignored,...

This paper takes a hard look at the experience with official intervention in sovereign debt crises, focusing on debt crises of the 1980s, Russia in 1998, Argentina in 2001, and Greece in 2010. Based on the track record, the authors argue that in situations where countries face a solvency...

Governments raise funds to meet their financing needs using a range of fixed income securities and loans with different maturities, interest rates, and exchange rate structures. Public debt managers need to consider various policy objectives when deciding on the structure of the public liability...

Countries with high debt exposure are vulnerable to economic and financial shocks that could lead to sovereign defaults. This paper develops a methodology to identify countries that are at risk of debt default based on four elements of debt vulnerability. These elements capture the different...