"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 aims to evaluate how public debt management in Brazil has affected its sustainability in the 1996-2007 period. In 2003 Brazilian public debt management changed the trade off between cost minimization and risk minimization emphasizing the first element. Using a Markov-Switching model...