This article analyzes sovereign debt defaults in four Latin American countries — Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico — for the period 1870-2012. The impact of sovereign defaults on real GDP growth is generally short-lived, while the impact in terms of output losses is deep and lasts long....

We construct a continuous sovereign debt crisis index for four large Latin American countries for the period 1870-2012. Our sovereign debt crisis index is similar to the Exchange Market Pressure Index for currency crises, and the Money Market Pressure Index for banking crises. To obtain the...

Sovereign debt crises have regained attention since the recent crises in several European countries. This paper focuses on a particular aspect of the debt crisis literature: the impact of sovereign default on economic growth. Previous research agrees on the negative impact, but not on size and...