The empirical literature on sovereign debt crises identifies the level of public debt (measured as a share of GDP) as a key variable to predict debt defaults and to determine sovereign market access. This evidence has led to the widespread use of (country-specific) debt thresholds to assess debt...

Why do almost all sovereign nations list their international bonds on stock exchanges? We examine several hypotheses for what drives sovereigns to list and where. In particular, we test the often invoked “bonding hypothesis,” which posits that exchanges perform a certification and monitoring...

This paper focuses on emerging markets government bonds issued in local currency with different maturities. Foreign investors face interest rate, currency, and credit risks. We consider the entire term structure of carry trade returns and find that, while the default premium does not contribute...