We investigate the relationship of the market pricing of sovereign risk to default, through CDS spreads for 16 Eurozone countries during 2008q1-2013q3. We take into account, through appropriate non-linear GMM estimations the endogeneity problem. We focus on “fiscal space” (DEBT or FISCAL),...

This paper studies the effect of sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors on growth during the period 1970-2010. We find that there are bad and good (or not so bad) debt restructurings for growth. While growth generally declines in the aftermath of a sovereign debt...

This paper studies the interaction between fiscal commitment and sovereign default risk in a model with optimal taxation and government spending. A time-inconsistency problem arises in our framework as the government cannot credibly commit to its future tax policies. As a result, it chooses...

Sovereigns issue debt on both domestic and foreign markets and the the two debts are uncorrelated in the data. Sovereigns default mostly selectively. We propose a theory to rationalize these observations. A government chooses the optimal combination of two debts to smooth consumption, which is...

Economic crises are an agonizing feature of modern economies leading to dramatic falls in the real GDP per capita. A crisis can exhaust country's resources forcing it to either apply for an IMF program or to default on its foreign or domestic liabilities. Do these drastic measures aid countries...

Europe's debt crisis resembles historical episodes of outright default on domestic public debt about which little research exists. This paper proposes a theory of domestic sovereign default based on distributional incentives affecting the welfare of risk-averse debt and non debtholders. A...

Infrequent but turbulent overt sovereign defaults on domestic creditors are a "forgotten history" in macroeconomics. We propose a heterogeneous-agents model in which the government chooses optimal debt and default on domestic and foreign creditors by balancing distributional incentives versus...

A mechanism to restructure the debt of an insolvent euro country is a missing element in the emerging institutional architecture of the euro area. The introduction of an insolvency proce-dure for sovereigns faces a dilemma: In the foreseeable future, its introduction would risk pushing Europe...

We analyze holdings of public bonds by over 20,000 banks in 191 countries, and the role of these bonds in 20 sovereign defaults over 1998-2012. Banks hold many public bonds (on average 9% of their assets), particularly in less financially-developed countries. During sovereign defaults, banks...

This paper provides a set of stylised facts on the mechanisms through which banking and sovereign distress feed into each other, using a large sample of emerging economies over three decades. We first define "twin crises" as events where banking crises and sovereign defaults combine, and further...