Trading in the CDS market in this paper occurs because irrational investors have optimal beliefs about the default state of the economy, those investors tend to be overly optimistic that default is less likely. Since the imposition of the CDS ban on member states of the European Union in 2012,...

We examine the welfare effects of bailouts in economies exposed to sovereign default risk. When a government of a small open economy requests a bailout from an international financial institution, it receives a non-defaultable loan of size G that comes with imposed debt limits. The government...