Internal and sovereign debt crises occur together and happen more frequently in economies with weak bankruptcy institutions. This paper provides a novel explanation. Internal crises arise because of the inability to liquidate private debtors when many default. In an optimal contract, a...

In this article, I consider environments in which all shocks have finite support and any transfer of resources is ex post voluntary. Consider an allocation that is achievable when potential trading partners know each others' histories. The one-money theorem says that the allocation is achievable...

In a wide range of economic settings, equilibrium outcomes in pure credit equilibria are known to be Pareto optimal (or Pareto optimal given informational or enforcement limitations). In a series of examples, I demonstrate how the above equivalence result can be used to provide a more complete...