The paper proposes an operational definition of safe public debt levels and discusses various concrete approaches to calculate them. A public debt level is considered safe if it is associated with a low probability of reaching levels likely to generate significant economic costs within a given...

This paper was presented at the panel session entitled “Risk managers on default probability for prime sovereigns”, held during the seminar on sovereign risk hosted by the BIS in January 2013.Full publication: "http://ssrn.com/abstract=2420000" Sovereign Risk: A World Without Risk-Free Assets?