This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. We compile a new database of 220,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering 91 countries. Our main insight is that, as in equity...

This paper explores a natural connection between fiscal multipliers and foreign holdings of public debt. Although fiscal expansions can raise domestic economic activity through various channels, they can also have crowding-out effects if the resources used to acquire public debt reduce domestic...

This paper investigates how a rise in US long-term interest rates would have an effect on other international markets. We document that a significant portion of long-term interest rates is due to term premium, which can be interpreted as compensation for inflation risk. Based on an assumed...

We provide benchmarks to evaluate what is an optimal foreign debt and a maximal foreign debt (debt-max), when risk is explicitly considered. When the actual debt exceeds debt-max, then the economy will default when a bad shock occurs. This paper is an application of the stochastic optimal...

All of the chapters in this volume represent the cutting edge of thinking about sovereign debt. The contributions stem from the authors' deep expertise in the subject matter. Almost all of the contributions are based on formal academic research conducted in the last two years. Accordingly, this...

The paper aims to present some risks and consequences of the indebtedness of an economy. The article is based on the results of a research project and it describes the negative effects of a high level of indebtedness of an economy, the elements that influence the risks of an economy's...

Governments issue debt both domestically and abroad. This heterogeneity introduces the possibility for governments to operate selective defaults that discriminate across investors. Using a novel dataset on the legal jurisdiction of sovereign defaults that distinguishes between defaults under...

We examine the welfare effects of bailouts in economies exposed to sovereign default risk. When a government of a small open economy requests a bailout from an international financial institution, it receives a non-defaultable loan of size G that comes with imposed debt limits. The government...

In the 1970s, while a leftist military dictatorship ruled Peru, more than 22 million acres of cultivated or grazing farmland – one-third of Peru's total agricultural acreage, or seven-and-a-half times the land area of Connecticut – were expropriated from thousands of large owners as part of...

We consider a two-period Bayesian trading game where in each period informed agents decide whether to buy an asset ("government debt") after observing an idiosyncratic signal about the prospects of default. While second-period buyers only need to forecast default, first-period buyers pass the...