This Article argues that the norms and legal practices of global finance in the arenas of sovereign debt and private wealth have led to a significant market failure, in particular the over-supply of sovereign borrowing and a related misallocation of global capital away from its most productive...

The pari passu clause in sovereign bond contracts has spawned an improbably huge academic literature and a fast-growing jurisprudence, culminating in recent U.S. federal court decisions, which used the clause to block payments on nearly $30 billion in Argentinian debt. The academic literature,...

China is the world’s largest official creditor, but basic facts are lacking about the terms and conditions of its lending. Very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government borrowers have ever been published or studied. This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal...

This study shows empirically that the political costs of sovereign default can differ considerably for domestic and external debt. The analysis uses new evidence from Danish and Swedish bond markets around World War II, a time when markets went from being fully integrated to fully segmented...

The UK's Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act 2010 aims to ensure that UK courts neither give nor enforce a judgment allowing recovery against Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (‘HIPC') on covered debts exceeding the amount calculated as sustainable under the HIPC Initiative.Some have objected...

Post-War conceptions of human rights have evolved independently of long-established theory and practice of property and creditor rights, to the detriment of the development and implementation of human rights law. This chapter attempts to build a first bridge between these two fields of law. It...

Puerto Rico has incurred debt well beyond its ability to repay. It attempted to address its fiscal woes through legislation allowing the restructuring of some its debt. The Supreme Court put a stop to this effort, holding that Congress in the Bankruptcy Code barred the Commonwealth from enacting...

In this paper I attempt to offer a legal analysis of recent legislations adopted in the United Kingdom and Belgium which aim to limit the possibility for sovereign debt creditors to obtain a judgment and collect on what is due to them under sovereign bonds. The paper starts with a review of...

The universal adoption of collective action clauses (CACs) was the most promising reform proposal in recent debates on sovereign debt crisis management. Academics and the public sector had been promoting CACs since 1995, yet market practice did not begin to change until 2003. This delay is often...

In response to debt crises, policy makers often feature Collective Action Clauses (CACs) in sovereign bonds among the pillars of international financial architecture. However, the content of official pronouncements about CACs suggests that CACs are more like doorknobs: a process tool with...