This paper surveys the literature on sovereign debt from the perspective of understanding how sovereign debt differs from privately issue debt, and why sovereign debt is deemed safe in some countries but risky in others. The answers relate to the unique power of the sovereign. One the one hand,...

We show that sovereign debt is unsustainable if debt contracts are not supported by direct sanctions and default carries only a ban from ever borrowing in financial markets even in the presence of uninsurable risks and time-varying interest rate. This extension of Bulow and Rogoff, 1989 requires...

A common view of sovereign debt markets is that they are prone to multiple equilibria. We show that such multiplicity does not exist in the infinite-horizon model of Eaton and Gersovitz (1981), a widely adopted benchmark for analyses of these markets. When the value from government default is...

We show that debt is sustainable at a competitive equilibrium based solely on the reputation for repayment; that is, even without collateral or legal sanctions available to creditors. In an incomplete asset market, when the rate of interest falls recurrently below the rate of growth of the...

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...

This chapter adopts the working assumption that it is conceivable that at some time in the future it would be in the interest of the United States to restructure its sovereign debt (i.e., to reduce the principal amount). It addresses in particular U.S. Treasury Securities. The chapter first...

Since February 2003 a number of debtor countries have issued bonds with collective action clauses (CACs) under New York law - a development welcomed by the official sector as tangible progress towards more orderly crisis resolution. Not all of these countries, however, have opted for the same...

This paper assesses the sensitivity of U.S. Treasury yields to supply shocks that may be triggered by massive sell-offs of U.S. Treasuries. A VAR model is estimated to analyze the supply elasticity of U.S. Treasury yields over the 2000-2008 period. The results suggest that China has the...

This paper investigates how a rise in US long-term interest rates would have an effect on other international markets. We document that a significant portion of long-term interest rates is due to term premium, which can be interpreted as compensation for inflation risk. Based on an assumed...

This paper estimates a VAR model to assess the sensitivity of U.S. Treasury yields to supply shocks that may be triggered by massive sell-offs of Treasury securities by foreign holders. The results suggest that the Treasury yield was not very susceptible to changes in supply and that if China,...