In this paper, the author considers sovereign debt in the form of one-period government bonds with default risk, which can be purchased by and traded among domestic and foreign investors. She shows that the "good equilibrium" is the only stable equilibrium under some quite general assumptions,...

In this paper, the author considers the sovereign debt in the form of one-period government bonds with default risk, which can be purchased by and traded among domestic and foreign investors. She shows that the weight assigned to the lenders' interest by the borrowing government at the time of...

Standard models of soft budget constraints consider bailouts as pure monetary transfers. However, in practice often additional obligations or restrictions, such as savings goals, are linked to monetary bailouts. This paper analyzes in a model of a federation if such restrictions change economic...

In this work we examine how economic growth affects public debt when interacted with reelection prospects. Reelection considerations shorten political time horizons and give rise to political myopia that exacerbates debt accumulation. That laxer institutional reelection restrictions (e.g. no...

This paper studies the impact of income inequality on sovereign spreads under elastic labor and endogenous taxation. We first document that high pre-tax income inequality is associated with high spreads both across countries and across U.S. states. We then develop a sovereign default model with...

For multiple decades, activists have sought to institute an international legal regime that limits the ability of despotic governments to borrow money and then shift those obligations onto more democratic successor governments. Our goal in this article is to raise the possibility of an alternate...

This essay draws on historical and current examples to examine the extent to which public creditors can enhance democracy by monitoring public officials in a manner that compansates for the failures of the government-debtor's constituents to monitor public officials. Creditors and constituents...

In this article we examine the relation between the maturity of sovereign debt and the choice of foreign or local contract terms (parameters). Our primary finding is that the maturities of bonds issued by non-investment-grade (NIG) sovereigns are greater when the bonds are written in foreign...

A well-designed public debt management strategy can help countries reduce their borrowing cost, contain financial risks and develop their domestic markets. Using survey data on debt management strategies, this paper studies whether the probability that a country has a formal debt management...

This Feature considers the debts of quasi-sovereign states in light of proposals to let them file for bankruptcy protection. States that have ceded some but not all sovereign prerogatives to a central government face distinct challenges as debtors. It is unhelpful to analyze these challenges...