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This paper builds a model of a sovereign borrower that has access to credit from private sector creditors and an IFI. Private sector creditors and the IFI offer different debt contracts that are modelled based on the institutional frameworks of these two types of debt. We analyze the decisions of a sovereign on how to allocate its borrowing needs between these two types of creditors, and when to default on its debt to the private sector creditor. The numerical analysis shows that, consistent with the data; the model predicts countercyclical IFI debt along with procyclical commercial debt flows, also matching other features of the data such as frequency of IFI borrowing and mean IFI debt stock.

The European sovereign debt crisis highlights the need to understand the factors driving sovereign credit markets. Post-COVID-19, rising sovereign debt and defaults emphasize the urgency of reviewing macro-level governance and regulatory frameworks. Therefore, this study empirically examines the role of institutional quality (IQ) in conditioning the effectiveness of macroprudential policies (MPPs) in mitigating sovereign default risk (SDR) across 44 advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market economies (EMEs) from 2009 to 2021. The two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) is employed to investigate the relationship, and the three-stage least squares (3SLS) method is used to test the robustness of the results. The major findings confirm that IQ and MPPs are critical in mitigating SDR. IQ enhances the effectiveness of MPPs in both AEs and EMEs. However, poor IQ in EMEs limits the effectiveness of MPPs. In AEs, governance significantly reduces SDR and complements MPPs, and specific borrower- and institution-targeted instruments are also effective. Conversely, in EMEs, governance has a limited impact, with only selected institution-targeted measures, such as loan restriction, limits to credit growth, limits to loan-to-deposit, and limits on foreign currency, showing effectiveness. These findings emphasize the necessity of improving governance structures in EMEs to enhance the effectiveness of MPPs. Further, standalone MPPs, especially institution-targeted, should be focused in the short-run while governance reforms are pursued to enhance long-run effectiveness of MPPs and IQ in EMEs.

Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing--and recovering--their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have chimed, \"this time is different\"--claiming that the old rules of valuation no longer apply and that the new situation bears little similarity to past disasters. With this breakthrough study, leading economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff definitively prove them wrong. Covering sixty-six countries across five continents, This Time Is Different presents a comprehensive look at the varieties of financial crises, and guides us through eight astonishing centuries of government defaults, banking panics, and inflationary spikes--from medieval currency debasements to today's subprime catastrophe. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, leading economists whose work has been influential in the policy debate concerning the current financial crisis, provocatively argue that financial combustions are universal rites of passage for emerging and established market nations. The authors draw important lessons from history to show us how much--or how little--we have learned.

The recent unravelling of the Eurozone’s financial integration raised concerns about feedback loops between sovereign and banking insolvency. This article provides a theory of the feedback loop that allows for both domestic bailouts of the banking system and sovereign debt forgiveness by international creditors or solidarity by other countries. Our theory has important implications for the re-nationalization of sovereign debt, macroprudential regulation, and the rationale for banking unions.

In this article I revisit the relationship between war and state making in modern times by focusing on two prominent types of war finance: taxes and foreign loans. Financing war with tax money enhances the capacity to assess wealth and monitor compliance, namely fiscal capacity. Tax-financed war facilitates the adoption of power-sharing institutions, which transform taxation into a non-zero-sum game, carrying on the effect of war in the long run. Financing war with external capital does not contribute to long-term fiscal capacity if borrowers interrupt debt service and, as part of the default settlement, war debt is condoned or exchanged for nontax revenue. The empirical evidence draws from war around the world as early as 1816. Results suggest that globalization of capital markets in the nineteenth century undermined the association between war, state making, and political reform.

We study the role of global financial intermediaries in international lending. We construct a model of the world economy, in which heterogeneous borrowers issue risky securities purchased by financial intermediaries. Aggregate shocks transmit internationally through financial intermediaries’ net worth. The strength of this transmission is governed by the degree of frictions intermediaries face in financing their risky investments. We provide direct empirical evidence on this mechanism showing that around Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy, emerging-market bonds held by more distressed global banks experienced larger price contractions. A quantitative analysis of the model shows that global financial intermediaries play a relevant role in driving borrowing-cost and consumption fluctuations in emerging-market economies, during both debt crises and regular business cycles. The portfolio of financial intermediaries and the distribution of bond holdings in the world economy are key to determine aggregate dynamics.

Why do US voters allow politicians to hold the country’s economy hostage during debt ceiling negotiations? In this research note, we argue that ignorance and uncertainty over the consequences of a debt ceiling breach play a nontrivial role in public support for hard-line negotiating positions. In a pre-registered survey experiment, two weeks before the June 2023 deadline to raise the US debt ceiling, we show that providing credible information about the consequences of default increases support for concessions among both Democrats and Republicans. Further, more certain information about the consequences of a debt ceiling breach has a larger effect than less-certain information suggesting that the unpredictable consequences of the crisis also help explain voter reluctance to accept concessions. The findings have implications for understanding debt ceiling negotiations and other crisis bargaining situations where the public serves as a relevant third party.

This paper evaluates empirically four types of cost that may result from an international sovereign default: reputational costs, international trade exclusion costs, costs to the domestic economy through the financial system, and political costs to the authorities. It finds that the economic costs are generally significant but short-lived, and sometimes do not operate through conventional channels. The political consequences of a debt crisis, by contrast, seem to be particularly dire for incumbent governments and finance ministers, broadly in line with what happens in currency crises.

Climate change poses an existential threat to the global economy. While there is a growing body of literature on the economic consequences of climate change, research on the link between climate change and sovereign default risk is nonexistent. We aim to fill this gap in the literature by estimating the impact of climate change vulnerability and resilience on the probability of sovereign debt default. Using a sample of 116 countries over the period 1995–2017, we find that climate change vulnerability and resilience have significant effects on the probability of sovereign debt default, especially among low-income countries. That is, countries with greater vulnerability to climate change face a higher likelihood of debt default compared to more climate resilient countries. These findings remain robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, including alternative measures of sovereign debt default, model specifications, and estimation methodologies.

The deleterious effect of debt restructuring on banks’ balance sheets and, consequently, on the economy as a whole has been a key policy issue. This paper studies how post-default fiscal policy interacts with this sovereign-bank loop and shape the response of a model economy. Calibration of the model matches characteristics of the Greek economy at the time of the bond exchange. Debt restructuring in place of higher lump-sum taxation or lower nonproductive government spending harms the economy even if no other cost of default is considered. However, the sovereign-debt loop is less costly to the economy than increases in labor or capital taxes to service debt. Even so, if fiscal policy is too responsive, a crowding-out effect inhibits the recovery of capital markets, hence a more conservative fiscal stance is desirable. Thus, how diabolic the post-default sovereign-bank loop is depends to a large extent on the way fiscal policy responds.