Following the Asian Financial Crisis, sovereign debt defaults prompted calls by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a statutory Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism (SDRM). In promoting the SDRM, IMF leaders argued that countries' sovereign debt problems needed something like U.S....

Debates about sovereign debt markets presume these markets are unique, because sovereign governments are unique borrowers. To the extent observers look elsewhere for guidance, it is to corporate debt markets. We argue that this conventional view—though useful to a point—has substantially and...

Our comparative case studies of bankruptcy lawmaking reveal an apparent political universal. In neither advanced (U.S., Britain) nor developing countries (China, Indonesia, Korea) do debtors consistently play a major role in corporate bankruptcy reforms. This is a puzzle. Debtors...