We study determinants of sovereign portfolios of Spanish banks over a long time-span, starting in 2008. Our findings challenge the view that banks engaged in moral hazard strategies to exploit the regulatory treatment of sovereign exposures. In particular, we show that being a weakly capitalized...

We document that governments whose local currency debt provides them with greater hedging benefits actually borrow more in foreign currency. We introduce two features into a government's debt portfolio choice problem to explain this finding: risk-averse lenders and lack of monetary policy...

The term "portfolio analysis, " introduced in economic theory by Harry Markowitz, is not new in scientific literature. However, analysis and criticism in the papers of local and foreign authors are mainly based on examples of developed capital markets. There are very few cases of portfolio...

Nominal debt provides consumption-smoothing benefits if it can be inflated away during recessions. However, we document empirically that countries with more countercyclical inflation, where nominal debt provides better consumption-smoothing, issue more foreign-currency debt. We propose that...

A country's net flow of capital consists of simultaneously occurring imports and exports. Because a tax on the income from capital imports affects the quantity of capital exports and vice versa, tax policies toward inbound and outbound capital should be jointly formulated in order to avoid...

Capital flows to developing countries are small and mostly take the form of loans rather than direct foreign investment. Kraay, Loayza, and Serven build a simple model of North-South capital flows that highlights the interplay between diminishing returns, production risk, and sovereign risk. The...

This study investigates the composition of newlywed couples' debt portfolios as it affects their debt difficulty, measured via three different financial ratios--a solvency ratio, a liquidity ratio, and a debt repayment ratio. While about 90% of all couples had some debt, the newlywed couples,...

We provide a model with endogenous portfolios of secured and unsecured household debt. Secured debt is collateralized by owner-occupied housing whereas unsecured debt can be discharged according to bankruptcy regulations. We show that the calibrated model matches important quantitative...