I discuss the multifaceted economic and financial vulnerabilities that have been created or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic on a foundation of already weak economic fundamentals in many countries. Crises often do not travel alone. Banking, sovereign debt, exchange rate crashes, sudden...

Official ending is much larger than commonly known, often surpassing total private cross-border capital flows, especially during wars, financial crises and natural catastrophes. This paper assembles the first comprehensive long-run dataset of official international loans, covering 230,000 loans,...

This paper employs high frequency transactions data on the world's oldest and most extensive centralized peer-to-peer Bitcoin market, which enables trade in the currencies of more than 135 countries. It presents an algorithm that allows, with high probability, the detection of "crypto vehicle...

China's lending boom to developing countries is morphing into defaults and debt distress. Given the secrecy surrounding China's loans, also the associated defaults remain "hidden”, as missed payments and restructuring details are not disclosed. This paper constructs an encompassing dataset of...

This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. It compiles a new database of 266,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering up to 91 countries. The main insight is that, as in...

Debt in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is at its highest level in half a century. In about nine out of 10 EMDEs, debt is higher now than it was in 2010 and, in half of the EMDEs, debt is more than 30 percentage points of gross domestic product higher. Historically, elevated...