We analyse the impact of interactions between monetary and fiscal policy on macroeconomic stability. We find that in the presence of sovereign default beliefs a monetary policy, which aims to stabilize inflation through an active interest rate policy, will destabilize the economy if the feedback...

We present a tractable, quantitative model of sovereign borrowing that delivers empirically relevant regularities, such as graduation from default, sovereign debt spreads that may be high for an extended period of time, high debt-to-GDP ratios, and high default rates. The model is an...

Over and over again, history shows that countries default on external debt when their economies experience a downturn. This paper presents a theoretical model of international lending that is consistent with this evidence. Productivity is stochastic and international capital markets are...

Few would dispute that sovereign defaults entail significant economic costs, including, most notably, important output losses. However, most of the evidence supporting this conventional wisdom, based on annual observations, suffers from serious measurement and identification problems. To address...

This essay revisits the role of legal enforcement in sovereign debt markets. The conventional view, which has long held sway in the economic literature, is that the law of sovereign immunity denies creditors effective legal remedies when governments do not repay their debts. To many observers,...