Despite the scale of the global financial crisis, to date it has not resulted in a sovereign debt crisis among emerging market countries. Two significant factors in this outcome are the improved macroeconomic management and public debt management in these countries over the past decade. This...

This paper introduces an"index of macroeconomic space"-- demonstrating the ability of acountry to run a countercyclical fiscal policy or a fiscal stimulus at any point in time -- to show how a sample of 20 mostly middle-income countries had entered the 2008 global financial crisis with different...

The magnitude of the public liabilities incurred as a result of the unprecedented government action in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and the consequences of exiting from the projected high debt scenario, have become a major source of concern about a future sovereign debt crisis....

This paper analyzes the recent growth of government domestic debt, including central bank debt, using a new data base on government domestic debt in developing countries with large, open financial systems. On average, government domestic debt grew much faster than GDP between 1994 and 2004 and...

Conventional assessments of debt sustainability in low income countries are hampered by poor data and weaknesses in methodology. In particular, the standard International Monetary Fund-World bank debt sustainability framework relies on questionable empirical assumptions: its baseline projections...

This paper uses a large cross-country dataset to empirically examine factors associated with sovereign defaults on external private creditors and expropriation of foreign direct investments in developing countries since the 1970s. In the long run, sovereign defaults and expropriations are likely...

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...

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 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...