We study gains from introducing a common numerical fiscal rule in a “Union” of model economies facing sovereign default risk. We show that among economies in the Union, there is significant disagreement about the common debt limit the Union should implement: the limit preferred by some...

As a response to economic crises triggered by COVID-19, sovereign debt standstill proposals emphasize debt payment suspensions without haircuts on the face value of debt obligations. We quantify the effects of standstills using a standard default model. We find that a one-year standstill...

We extend the standard Eaton and Gersovitz (1981) sovereign default model to study bailout policies. In our setup a country that concentrates a significant fraction of bond holders decide on a period by period basis whether to bailout a debtor government. The combination of bailout policies and...

We measure the effects of debt dilution on sovereign default risk and show how these effects can be mitigated with debt contracts promising borrowing-contingent payments. First, we calibrate a baseline model `a la Eaton and Gersovitz (1981) to match features of the data. In this model, bonds'...

A long-standing puzzle of international capital flows is why countries hold large amount of external debt and foreign reserves at the same time. To address this puzzle, we propose a sovereign default model where the government decides jointly over the accumulation of long-duration bonds and...