This paper analyzes the Euro crisis in light of the experience of center-periphery relations over the last 40 years of renewed financial globalization. The crisis shows the characteristic pattern evident in so many other crises in the developing world: i.e. “boom” and “bust” phases of...

Although the sovereign debt crisis is worldwide considered as a main disorder affecting indebted countries' economic recovery, its analysis is still incomplete and has so far failed to provide a satisfactory explanation of its origin and of the way it can be successfully addressed. The aim of...

In 1998, following some 10 years of structural reforms that began during the late Soviet era under the Perestroika processes and continued after the collapse of the USSR, Russia has recorded its first year of economic growth. Then, with virtually no advanced warning, by the of August 1998,...

I show that reputation alone can sustain nominal sovereign debt, which is subject to both the risks of default and opportunistic devaluations. Nominal debt combined with a countercyclical exchange rate policy allows more hedging against shocks than real savings if markets are incomplete. Thus,...

This article provides a historical overview of the factors leading up to debt crises and the default methods used by the governments to solve them, ranging from repudiation and restructuring to inflation tax and financial repression. The paper also analyses the Spanish governments’ graduation...

This paper develops a sovereign debt model with investment, in which the country's productivity shock has two components: a private shock (such as a change in domestic institutions) and a public shock (such as a publicly observed technological change). The government observes the private shock,...

This paper develops a theory of sovereign borrowing, where the interaction between the asymmetry of information and the lack of commitment for repayment leads to a novel signaling motive for the issuance of sovereign debt. If the government is more informed than foreign investors about a...

Since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System diverging current account positions in Europe have prevailed. While the Southern and Western European countries have tended to run current account deficits, the current accounts of the Central and Northern European countries, in particular Germany,...

It is frequently argued that credit rating agencies (CRAs) have acted procyclically in their rating of sovereign debt in the European Monetary Union (EMU). They are believed to have under-rated sovereign risk in the early years of EMU, when integrated financial markets provided easier access to...

The origins of the Greek-sovereign debt crisis were the country’s large fiscal and external imbalances. The key factor that abetted those imbalances was the absence of a short-tomedium term adjustment mechanism -- due to perceptions of sovereign bailouts -- in the euro-area that would have...