At the April 2003 meeting of the International Monetary and Financial Committees, it was decided to further encourage the contractual approach to smoothing the process of sovereign debt restructuring by encouraging the more widespread use of collective action clauses (CACs) in international...

This paper analyzes yield spreads on sovereign debt issued by emerging markets using modern data from the 1990s and newly-collected historical data on debt traded in London during 1870–1913, a previous “golden era” for international capital market integration. Applying several empirical...

This paper compares the impact of shocks to U.S. interest rates and emerging market bond spreads on domestic interest rates and exchange rates across several emerging market economies with different exchange rate regimes. Consistent with conventional priors, the results indicate that interest...

Many official groups have endorsed the wider use by emerging market borrowers of contract clauses which allow for a qualified majority of bondholders to restructure repayment terms in the event of financial distress. Some have argued that such clauses will be associated with moral hazard and...

We estimate ex post returns to emerging market debt by combining secondary-market prices with observed flows based on World Bank data. From 1970-2000, returns averaged 9 percent per annum, about the same as returns on a ten-year U.S. treasury bond. This reflects the combined effect of the 1980s...

Contrary to widespread expectation, debt renegotiations in the era of bond finance have generally been quick and involved little litigation. We present a model that rationalizes the initial fears and offers interpretations for why they did not materialize. When the exchange offer is sufficiently...

If interest rates (country spreads) rise, debt can rapidly be subject to a snowball effect, which becomes self-fulfilling with regard to the fundamentals themselves. This is a market imperfection, because we cannot be confident that the unaided market will choose the "good" over the "bad"...

This paper presents a theory of the maturity of international sovereign debt and derives its implications for the reform of the international financial architecture. It presents a general equilibrium model in which the need to roll over external debt disciplines the policies of debtor countries...

We study a model of sovereign debt crisis that combines problems of creditor co-ordination and debtor moral hazard. Solving the sovereign debtor’s incentives leads to excessive ‘rollover failure’ by creditors when sovereign default occurs. We discuss how the incidence of crises might be...