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Working Paper
Improving Sovereign Debt Restructurings
The wave of sovereign defaults in the early 1980s and the string of debt crises in subsequent decades have fostered proposals involving policy interventions in sovereign debt restructurings, and the recent global pandemic crisis has further reignited this discussion. A key question about these policy proposals for debt restructurings that has proved hard to handle is how they influence the behavior of creditors and debtors. We address this challenge by evaluating policy proposals in a quantitative sovereign default model that incorporates two essential features: maturity choice and debt ...
Working Paper
Improving Sovereign Debt Restructurings
The wave of sovereign defaults in the early 1980s and the string of debt crises in subsequent decades have fostered proposals involving policy interventions in sovereign debt restructurings. The global financial crisis and the recent global pandemic have further reignited this discussion among academics and policymakers. A key question about these policy proposals for debt restructurings that has proved hard to handle is how they influence the behavior of creditors and debtors. We address this challenge by evaluating policy proposals in a quantitative sovereign default model that ...
Working Paper
News, sovereign debt maturity, and default risk
Leading into a debt crisis, interest rate spreads on sovereign debt rise before the economy experiences a decline in productivity, suggesting that news about future economic developments may play an important role in these episodes. In a VAR estimation, a news shock has a larger contemporaneous impact on sovereign credit spreads than a comparable shock to labor productivity. A quantitative model of news and sovereign debt default with endogenous maturity choice generates impulse responses and a variance decomposition similar to the empirical VAR estimates. The dynamics of the economy after a ...
Working Paper
Policy Rules and Large Crises in Emerging Markets
Emerging countries have increasingly adopted rules to discipline government policy. The COVID-19 shock lead to widespread suspension and modification of these rules. We study rules and flexibility in a sovereign default model with domestic fiscal and monetary policies and long-term external debt. We find welfare gains from adopting monetary targets and debt limits during normal times. Though government policy cannot itself counteract fundamental shocks hitting the economy, the adoption of rules has a significant impact on policy, macroeconomic outcomes and welfare during large, unexpected ...
Working Paper
Policy Rules and Large Crises in Emerging Markets
Emerging economies have adopted fiscal and monetary rules to discipline government policy. We study the value and macroeconomic implications of rules and flexibility within a sovereign-default model that incorporates domestic fiscal and monetary policies and long-term external debt. Adopting monetary targets and debt limits during normal times yields welfare gains. Suspending rules can significantly influence policy, macroeconomic outcomes, and welfare during large, unforeseen crises. The gains from flexibility depend on how quickly policymakers are able to reimpose rules after the crisis.
Working Paper
Policy Rules and Large Crises in Emerging Markets
Emerging economies have adopted fiscal and monetary rules to discipline government policy. We study the value and macroeconomic implications of rules and flexibility within a sovereign-default model that incorporates domestic fiscal and monetary policies and long-term external debt. Adopting monetary targets and debt limits during normal times yields welfare gains. Suspending rules can significantly influence policy, macroeconomic outcomes, and welfare during large, unforeseen crises. The gains from flexibility depend on how quickly policymakers are able to reimpose rules after the crisis.
Report
International banking and liquidity risk transmission: lessons from across countries
Activities of international banks have been at the core of discussions on the causes and effects of the international financial crisis. Yet we know little about the actual magnitudes and mechanisms for transmission of liquidity shocks through international banks, including the reasons for heterogeneity in transmission across banks. The International Banking Research Network, established in 2012, brings together researchers from around the world with access to micro-level data on individual banks to analyze issues pertaining to global banks. This paper summarizes the common methodology and ...
Working Paper
Self-Fulfilling Debt Crises, Revisited: The Art of the Desperate Deal
We revisit self-fulfilling rollover crises by introducing an alternative equilibrium selection that involves bond auctions at depressed but strictly positive equilibrium prices, a scenario in line with observed sovereign debt crises. We refer to these auctions as ?desperate deals?, the defining feature of which is a price schedule that makes the government indifferent to default or repayment. The government randomizes at the time of repayment, which we show can be implemented in pure strategies by introducing stochastic political payoffs or external bailouts. Quantitatively, auctions at ...
Working Paper
"Let Us Put Our Moneys Together": Minority-Owned Banks and Resilience to Crises
Minority-owned banks have a mission to promote economic well-being in their communities. In particular, specialization in lending based on a central mechanism of shared-minority identity can yield an advantage in serving community needs through times of financial and economic crises. To test this proposition, we analyze individual banks in their local market context from 2006 to 2020. Results suggest minority-owned banks improve economic resilience in their communities during the global financial crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 crisis through increased small business and household lending, but ...
Working Paper
Policy Interventions in Sovereign Debt Restructurings
The wave of sovereign defaults in the early 1980s and the string of debt crises in the decades that followed have fostered proposals involving policy interventions in sovereign debt restructurings. A key question about these proposals that has proved hard to handle is how they in influence the behavior of creditors and debtors. We address such challenge by incorporating these policy proposals into a quantitative model in the tradition of Eaton and Gersovitz (1981) that includes renegotiation in sovereign debt restructurings. Critically, the model also endogenizes the choice of debt maturity, ...