Given the huge private debt in Cyprus, the risk of a recession is very high because of the compelling need for households and corporations to repair their balance sheets. The Central Bank now admits that it may take 10 years to tackle the huge non-performing loans problem. What they do not...

We provide an early assessment of the Juncker Commission's contributions to the ongoing reform of the euro area. In doing so, we present a chronological summary of the reform process up to 2014. At the time, the euro area architecture had undergone many changes. These were mainly focused on risk...

The long history of sovereign debt and the associated enforcement problem have attracted researchers in many fields. In this paper, we survey empirical work by economists, historians, and political scientists. As we review the empirical literature, we emphasize parallel developments in the...

The long history of sovereign debt and the associated enforcement problem have attracted researchers in many fields. In this paper, we survey empirical work by economists, historians, and political scientists. As we review the empirical literature, we emphasize parallel developments in the...

In this essay we review the empirical literature about sovereign debt and default. As we survey the work of economists, historians, and political scientists, we also emphasize parallel developments by theorists and recommend steps to improve the correspondence between theory and data

We present a new data set on credit to the general government sector for 26 advanced and 14 emerging market economies. The main benefit of these new BIS series for "public debt" is that they provide data with similar characteristics from across the globe, facilitating cross-country comparisons....

It is true but a sad contementary that overdependence on conventional accounting data aggravated by lack of timely availability of accounting data for budget preparation and presentation year after year by policy makers have resulted in wrong policy prescriptions to steer the economies on...

The tendency to continuously procure debts not constructively directed at well thought-out courses remains quite absurd. With feverish grip of this national concern among Nigerians, key stakeholders seriously lament the huge debts incurred in the past which did not significantly translate to any...

This paper describes and quantifies fiscal risk in advanced and developing economies. Forecast errors in GDP growth explain nearly half of fiscal risk in advanced economies. However, errors in growth forecasts are less important in explaining fiscal risk in low- and middle-income countries. Most...

This paper studies how the currency composition of public debt affects debt sustainability in developing countries. We show empirically that the debt-to-GDP ratio tends to grow at a faster rate when countries with a high share of foreign currency debt face a currency depreciation. The paper also...