This article surveys the literature on sovereign debt sustainability from its origins in the mid-1980s to the present, focusing on four debates. First, the shift from an "accounting based" view of debt sustainability, evaluated using government borrowing rates, to a "model based" view which uses...

1. The Basics of Modern Money Theory -- 2. The Basics of Macroeconomic Accounting -- 3. Spending by Issuer of Domestic Currency -- 4. The Domestic Monetary System: Banking and Central Banking -- 5. Fiscal Operations in a Nation That Issues Its Own Currency -- 6. Tax Policy for Sovereign Nations...

We present a model of central bank collateralized lending to study the optimal choice of the haircut policy. We show that a lending facility provides a bundle of two types of insurance: insurance against liquidity risk as well as insurance against downside risk of the collateral. Setting a...