We study sovereign external debt crises over the past 200 years, with a focus on creditor losses, or "haircuts". Our sample covers 327 sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors over 205 default spells since 1815. Creditor losses vary widely (from none to 100%), but the...

This paper studies episodes in which aggregate bank credit contracts alongside expanding economic activity-credit reversals. Using data for 179 countries during 1960-2017, the paper finds that reversals are a relatively common phenomenon--on average, they occur every five years. By comparison,...

The recent financial crisis proved that financial contagion could spread among countries resulting in disruptive effects. In this paper, by modeling and simulating banking system behavior and linkages across countries, we assess, based on data from the BIS and IMF, the possible outcome of...

Does a shortage of safe assets sow the seeds of instability in a financial system? This paper empirically explores the hypothesis of safe asset shortage-induced excess credit booms and financial instability. As an alternative step forward from the assumption of growth- or wealth-based demands...

We analyze the link between banking sector quality and sovereign risk in the whole European Union over 1999–2014. We employ four different indicators of sovereign risk (including market- and opinion-based assessments), a rich set of theoretically and empirically motivated banking sector...