We quantify the probability that a sovereign defaults on repayment obligations in foreign currency. Adopting the structural approach as first introduced by Merton, we consider the sovereigns ability-to-pay, characterised by the sum of discounted future payment surpluses, as the underlying...

Traditional ways of analyzing the effects of monetary policy shocks via structural vector autoregressions require the use of unrealistic identifying assumptions: they either do not allow for a response of output and prices on impact of the shock, or they exclude contemporaneous values of these...