How should the contingent liabilities of a sovereign be treated in a general restructuring of the debts of that sovereign? This question has played only a minor role in past sovereign debt restructurings because the size of such contingent liabilities has in most cases been small. In recent...

The Eurozone official sector has declared that the belated restructuring of Greek bonds held by private sector creditors in 2012 was a “unique and exceptional” event, never, ever to be repeated in any other Eurozone country. Maybe so. But if this assurance proves in time to be as fragile as...

Plan A for addressing the Greek debt crisis has taken the form of a €110 billion financial support package for Greece announced by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund on May 2, 2010. A significant part of that €110 billion, if and when it is disbursed, will be used to...

The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis began in the spring of 2010. Seven years on seems like an appropriate point at which to critique how the crisis has been handled and to assess whether policy changes will be required should it flare up again. In particular, there are a number of lessons to be...

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...

Why do almost all sovereign nations list their international bonds on stock exchanges? We examine several hypotheses for what drives sovereigns to list and where. In particular, we test the often invoked “bonding hypothesis,” which posits that exchanges perform a certification and monitoring...

The decade and a half of litigation that followed Argentina's sovereign bond default in 2001 ended with a great disturbance in the Force. A new creditor weapon had been uncloaked: The prospect of a court injunction requiring the sovereign borrower to pay those creditors that decline to...

• The IMF staff's 2013 proposal to reprofile (i.e., stretch out for a short period without haircutting principal or interest) the maturing debt of a country that has lost market access is a sensible policy in cases where the IMF is uncertain whether the country's debt stock is sustainable.•...