The feedback loop between sovereign and financial sector insolvency has been identified as a key driver of the European debt crisis and has motivated an array of policy proposals. We revisit this "doom loop" focusing on governments' incentives to default. To this end, we present a simple...

This paper investigates the link between sovereign ratings and macroeconomic fundamentals for a group of euro area countries which recorded rating downgrades amid the euro area sovereign debt crisis. We apply an elaborated econometric estimation technique, based on a Bayesian ordered probit...

This paper studies the effects of government guarantees on the interconnection between banking and sovereign debt crises in a framework where both the banks and the government are fragile and the credibility and feasibility of the guarantees are determined endogenously. The analysis delivers...

We confront five stylized facts related to sovereign default: 1) the presence of serial defaulters; 2) the prevalence of partial over complete default; 3) the counter-cyclicality of default; 4) non-linearity of sovereign spreads; and 5) heterogeneous outcomes among serial defaulters. In a model...

This paper studies the interaction of government debt and financial markets. This interaction, termed a "diabolic loop", is driven by government choice to bail out banks and the resulting incentives for banks to hold government debt rather than self-insure through equity buffers. We highlight...

Sovereign debt crises are difficult to solve. This paper studies the "holdout problem", meaning the risk that creditors refuse to participate in a debt restructuring. We document a large variation in holdout rates, based on a comprehensive new dataset of 23 bond restructurings with external...

For centuries, defaulting governments were immune from legal action by foreign creditors. This paper shows that this is no longer the case. Building a dataset covering four decades, we find that creditor lawsuits have become an increasingly common feature of sovereign debt markets. The legal...