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Working Paper
Local Currency Sovereign Risk
Do governments default on debt denominated in their own currency? We introduce a new measure of sovereign credit risk, the local currency credit spread, defined as the spread of local currency bonds over the synthetic local currency risk-free rate constructed using cross currency swaps. We find that local currency credit spreads are positive and sizable. Compared with credit spreads on foreign currency denominated debt, local currency credit spreads have lower means, lower cross-country correlations, and are less sensitive to global risk factors. Global risk aversion and liquidity factors can ...
Working Paper
Bank crises and sovereign defaults in emerging markets: exploring the links
This paper provides a set of stylized 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 distinguish between those banking crises that end up in sovereign debt crises, and vice-versa. We then assess what differentiates ?single? episodes from ?twin? ones. Using an event analysis methodology, we study the behavior around crises of variables describing the balance sheet interconnection ...
Working Paper
Risk Management for Sovereign Debt Financing with Sustainability Conditions
We develop a model of debt sustainability analysis with optimal financing decisions in the presence of macroeconomic, financial and fiscal uncertainty. We define a coherent measure of refinancing risk, and trade off the risks of debt stock and flow dynamics, subject to debt sustainability constraints and endogenous risk and term premia. We optimize both static and dynamic financing strategies, compare them with several simple rules and consol financing to demonstrate economically significant effects of optimal financing, and show that the stock-flow tradeoff can be critical for ...
Journal Article
When Nations Don't Pay Their Debts
Features article: When Nations Don't Pay Their Debts: What happens when countries can't or won't repay
Working Paper
The Stock of External Sovereign Debt: Can We Take the Data at ‘Face Value’?
The stock of sovereign debt is typically measured at face value. Defined as the undiscounted sum of future principal repayments, face values are misleading when debts are issued with different contractual forms or maturities. In this paper, we construct alternative measures of the stock of external sovereign debt for 100 developing countries from 1979 through 2006 that correct for differences in contractual form and maturity. We show that our alternative measures: (1) paint a very different quantitative, and in some cases also qualitative, picture of the stock of developing country external ...