We assess the role of financial linkages in the transmission of sovereign risk in the Euro Crisis. Building on the narrative approach by Romer and Romer (1989), we use financial news to identify structural shocks in a vector autoregressive model of daily sovereign CDS premia for eleven European...

This paper examines two major risks to foreign investors: default on sovereign debt and expropriation of foreign direct investment, which we refer to collectively as "sovereign theft." Using a series of formal models, we analyze how the incentives to engage in sovereign theft vary with the state...

This paper examines key determinants of the distance between the sovereign's credit rating and the ratings of sub-sovereign foreign currency bonds, such as bond issuers' type, debt characteristics, and global and country's economic conditions. Using a comprehensive international bond-level...

Emerging Market and Developing Economies (EMDE) countries are the leading destinations of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). We investigate whether prudent monetary and fiscal policy through indicators that reflect the expectations concerning the central bank's commitment to a target and the...

China’s lending boom to developing countries is morphing into defaults and debt distress. Given the secrecy surrounding China’s loans, also the associated defaults remain “hidden”, as missed payments and restructuring details are not disclosed. We construct an encompassing dataset of...

This paper shows that China has launched a new global system for cross-border rescue lending to countries in debt distress. We build the first comprehensive dataset on China’s overseas bailouts between 2000 and 2021 and provide new insights into China’s growing role in the global financial...

This paper investigates the major drivers of the public debt growth in 184 countries. The underlying cross-country survey is conducted on the basis of the improved compilation of datasets on the central government debt for 2013. The study finds that oil abundance, economic growth rate, the share...

This paper uses the framework of arbitrage-pricing theory to study the relationship between liquidity risk and sovereign bond risk premia. The London Stock Exchange in the late 19th century is an ideal laboratory in which to test the proposition that liquidity risk affects the price of sovereign...

This paper analyzes the trajectories of the Greek public deficit and sovereign debt over the last three decades and their connection to the political and economic environment, paying special attention to the causality between the public and the foreign deficit. The authors argue that, from 1980...

The long history of sovereign debt and the associated enforcement problem have attracted researchers in many fields. In this paper, we survey empirical work by economists, historians, and political scientists. As we review the empirical literature, we emphasize parallel developments in the...