Past cycles of sovereign lending and default suggest that debt crises will recur at some point. This book shows why investors should reckon with similar credit events in the future. Surveying the sovereign bond market, the author provides investors with a useful toolkit for analyzing sovereign bonds and foreseeing trends in the international financial architecture. The result should be a better understanding of debt crises and more deliberate investment decisions.

An integrated approach to the economics of sovereign default Fiscal crises and sovereign default repeatedly threaten the stability and growth of economies around the world. Mark Aguiar and Manuel Amador provide a unified and tractable theoretical framework that elucidates the key economics behind sovereign debt markets, shedding light on the frictions and inefficiencies that prevent the smooth functioning of these markets, and proposing sensible approaches to sovereign debt management. The Economics of Sovereign Debt and Default looks at the core friction unique to sovereign debt—the lack of strong legal enforcement—and goes on to examine additional frictions such as deadweight costs of default, vulnerability to runs, the incentive to “dilute” existing creditors, and sovereign debt’s distortion of investment and growth. The book uses the tractable framework to isolate how each additional friction affects the equilibrium outcome, and illustrates its counterpart using state-of-the-art computational modeling. The novel approach presented here contrasts the outcome of a constrained efficient allocation—one chosen to maximize the joint surplus of creditors and government—with the competitive equilibrium outcome. This allows for a clear analysis of the extent to which equilibrium prices efficiently guide the government’s debt and default decisions, and of what drives divergences with the efficient outcome. Providing an integrated approach to sovereign debt and default, this incisive and authoritative book is an ideal resource for researchers and graduate students interested in this important topic.

We analyze holdings of public bonds by over 20,000 banks in 191 countries, and the role of these bonds in 20 sovereign defaults over 1998-2012. Banks hold many public bonds (on average 9% of their assets), particularly in less financially-developed countries. During sovereign defaults, banks increase their exposure to public bonds, especially large banks and when expected bond returns are high. At the bank level, bondholdings correlate negatively with subsequent lending during sovereign defaults. This correlation is mostly due to bonds acquired in pre-default years. These findings shed light on alternative theories of the sovereign default-banking crisis nexus.

The last time global sovereign debt reached the level seen today was at the end of the Second World War, and this shaped a generation of economic policymaking. International institutions were transformed, country policies were often draconian and distortive, and many crises ensued. By the early 1970s, when debt fell back to pre-war levels, the world was radically different. It is likely that changes of a similar magnitude -for better and for worse - will play out over coming decades. Sovereign Debt: A Guide for Economists and Practitioners is an attempt to build some structure around the issues of sovereign debt to help guide economists, practitioners and policymakers through this complicated, but not intractable, subject. Sovereign Debt brings together some of the world's leading researchers and specialists in sovereign debt to cover a range of sub-disciplines within this vast topic. It explores debt management with debt sustainability; debt reduction policies with crisis prevention policies; and the history with the conjuncture. It is a foundation text for all those interested in sovereign debt, with a particular focus real world examples and issues.

This paper provides an overview of sovereign debt portfolio risks and discusses various liability management operations (LMOs) and instruments used by public debt managers to mitigate these risks. Debt management strategies analyzed in the context of helping reach debt portfolio targets and attain desired portfolio structures. Also, the paper outlines how LMOs could be integrated into a debt management strategy and serve as policy tools to reduce potential debt portfolio vulnerabilities. Further, the paper presents operational issues faced by debt managers, including the need to develop a risk management framework, interactions of debt management with fiscal policy, monetary policy, and financial stability, as well as efficient government bond markets.

Emerging markets business cycle models treat default risk as part of an exogenous interest rate on working capital, while sovereign default models treat income fluctuations as an exogenous endowment process with ad-noc default costs. We propose instead a general equilibrium model of both sovereign default and business cycles. In the model, some imported inputs require working capital financing; default on public and private obligations occurs simultaneously. The model explains several features of cyclical dynamics around default triggers an efficiency loss as these inputs are replaced by imperfect substitutes; and default on public and private obligations occurs simultaneously. The model explains several features of cyclical dynamics around deraults, countercyclical spreads, high debt ratios, and key business cycle moments.

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950–2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and bondholders, and 447 bilateral debt agreements with the Paris Club. We present new stylized facts on the outcome and process of debt restructurings, including on the size of haircuts, creditor participation, and legal aspects. In addition, the paper summarizes the relevant empirical literature, analyzes recent restructuring episodes, and discusses ongoing debates on crisis resolution mechanisms, credit default swaps, and the role of collective action clauses.