We study sovereign external debt crises over the past 200 years, with a focus on creditor losses, or "haircuts". Our sample covers 327 sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors over 205 default spells since 1815. Creditor losses vary widely (from none to 100%), but the...

This chapter is on quantitative models of sovereign debt crises in emerging economies. We interpret debt crises broadly to cover all of the major problems a country can experience while trying to issue new debt, including default, sharp increases in the spread and failed auctions. We examine the...

Ausgelöst durch das Zusammentreffen niedriger Zinsen in reichen Ländern und einem hohen Finanzierungsbedarf für Infrastruktur in vielen ärmeren Ländern befindet sich die Verschuldung der Länder des Globalen Südens seit Jahren auf einem dramatisch hohen Niveau. Hohe Schuldendienstzahlungen...

This chapter surveys recent research on international financial crises. A financial crisis is characterized by a sudden, dramatic outflow of financial resources from an economy with an open capital account. This outflow may be primarily driven by the expectation of a large nominal devaluation,...

How do financial markets respond to concerns over debt sustainability and the level of public debt in emerging markets? We introduce a measure of debt sustainability – the difference between the debt stabilizing primary balance and the primary balance – in an otherwise standard spread...

While there is still much disagreement on the causes underlying recent emerging markets' crises, one factor that most observers have agreed upon is that contracting "dollar" (foreign currency) denominated external debt - as opposed to domestic currency debt - created balance sheet mismatches...

Using a novel financial data-set which covers an extensive time period between 1995-2012, we test for the impact of currency denomination of bonds on Asian firms' survival probabilities. Our data span two financial crises: the 1997-98 Asian crisis and the 2007-09 global financial crisis. We find...

This paper documents a set of stylized facts about leverage and financial fragility in the non-financial corporate sector in emerging markets since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Corporate debt vulnerability indicators prior to the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) attributed to corporate...

We examine the welfare effects of bailouts in economies exposed to sovereign default risk. When a government of a small open economy requests a bailout from an international financial institution, it receives a non-defaultable loan of size G that comes with imposed debt limits. The government...