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,...

Most models currently used to determine optimal foreign reserve holdings take the level of international debt as given. However, given the sovereign's willingness-to-pay incentive problems, reserve accumulation may reduce sustainable debt levels. In addition, assuming constant debt levels does...

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...

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,...

The 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda recognized the need for policies aimed at maintaining longterm debt sustainability. This paper describes a set of commonly used definitions of debt sustainability and shows that none of them focuses on long-term debt sustainability. It then discusses concept...

The sovereign debt literature of the 1980s made the important point that lenders to a sovereign country will impose a credit ceiling on their lending, because at a sufficiently high level of debt the country will find it less onerous to default than to keep on servicing its debt. Provided that...

The rise in sovereign bond holdings in stress countries could deepen a recession by allocating resources away from the private sector. Our paper investigates whether the demand function for sovereign bonds changed in the crisis period and the causes of such a change. We show that it did, and...

The complexity of the Cyprus crisis makes answering the question of the title difficult, while the policy implications make the question important. However, the answer to this question unavoidably points the finger to those responsible, and as a result the quest for an answer is clouted by...

This paper explores a natural connection between fiscal multipliers and foreign holdings of public debt. Although fiscal expansions can raise domestic economic activity through various channels, they can also have crowding-out effects if the resources used to acquire public debt reduce domestic...