We present a model of sovereign debt in which, contrary to conventional wisdom, government defaults are costly because they destroy the balance sheets of domestic banks. In our model, better financial institutions allow banks to be more leveraged, thereby making them more vulnerable to sovereign...

With a view to establishing a Capital Markets Union (CMU), efforts to integrate (private) capital markets and private risk-sharing in the European Union are underway. However, the single (capital) market will be burdened by a perennial potential threat to sovereign bond market stability in the...

During the past fifteen years, financial markets in Latin America have experienced a major transformation. This process and its effects on the nature of risks and policy challenges in Latin America were the focus of a May 2007 conference in Mexico City sponsored by the Representative Office for...

During the past fifteen years, financial markets in Latin America have experienced a major transformation. This process and its effects on the nature of risks and policy challenges in Latin America were the focus of a May 2007 conference in Mexico City sponsored by the Representative Office for...

This paper argues that scholarship on the varieties of capitalism could provide a more complete understanding of fiscal policy convergence in the Eurozone after 2010 if it better examined the interdependencies between banks and sovereigns. Recently, this scholarship has explained fiscal...

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...

We show that debt is sustainable at a competitive equilibrium based solely on the reputation for repayment; that is, even without collateral or legal sanctions available to creditors. In an incomplete asset market, when the rate of interest falls recurrently below the rate of growth of the...

Do government financial assets help improve public debt sustainability? To answer this question, we assemble a comprehensive dataset on government assets using multiple sources and covering 110 advanced and emerging market economies since the late 1980s. We then use this rich database to...

This paper addresses the following questions. Is there evidence of financial contagion in the Eurozone? To what extent a country's vulnerability to contagion depends on "fundamentals" as opposed the government's "credibility"? We look at the empirical evidence on European sovereigns CDS spreads...

This paper studies the nature of spillover effects in bank lending flows from advanced to the emerging market economies and identifies specific channels through which such effects occur. Based on a gravity model we examine a panel data set on cross-border bank flows from 17 advanced to 28...