The global recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting deterioration in many countries’ public finances have increased the risk of sovereign debt crises. Although crisis prevention remains paramount, these developments have made it imperative to re-examine the adequacy of the...

We provide benchmarks to evaluate what is an optimal foreign debt and a maximal foreign debt (debt-max), when risk is explicitly considered. When the actual debt exceeds debt-max, then the economy will default when a bad shock occurs. This paper is an application of the stochastic optimal...

Based on more recent research and evidence, including declassified information regarding the communist period in Romania, the study focuses on examining the 1980s foreign debt crisis context, its determinants and consequences, the impact of internal and external factors, intending to provide an...

We show that sovereign debt is unsustainable if debt contracts are not supported by direct sanctions and default carries only a ban from ever borrowing in financial markets even in the presence of uninsurable risks and time-varying interest rate. This extension of Bulow and Rogoff, 1989 requires...

We analyze how concerns for model misspecification on the part of international lenders affect the desirability of issuing state-contingent debt instruments in a standard sovereign default model à la Eaton and Gersovitz (1981). We show that for the commonly used threshold state-contingent bond...

This paper analyzes different government debt relief programs in the European Monetary Union. I build a model and study different options ranging from debt relief to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The analysis reveals the following: First, patient countries repay debt, while impatient...

The paper aims to present some risks and consequences of the indebtedness of an economy. The article is based on the results of a research project and it describes the negative effects of a high level of indebtedness of an economy, the elements that influence the risks of an economy's...

This article surveys the literature on sovereign debt sustainability from its origins in the mid-1980s to the present, focusing on four debates. First, the shift from an “accounting based” view of debt sustainability, evaluated using government borrowing rates, to a “model based” view...

Climate change adaptation efforts are heavily dependent on a country's fiscal capacity and the associated costs of undertaking adaptation policies. The current accumulation of high debt levels in emerging and low-income developing countries, which are disproportionately affected by climate...

Unlike the crisis years of 2007-2009 (when the insolvency of large banks was a major problem), the current round of the global financial crisis has fiscal origins. Almost all developed countries suffer from an excessive public debt burden that has been built up over the last two decades or more....