Model Of Sovereign Debt Research Articles

Sovereign debt and credit default swaps

How do credit default swaps (CDS) affect sovereign debt markets? We analyze how liquidity, exposure to default risk, and regulation affect the answer to this question using a sovereign debt model where investors trade bonds and CDS over the counter via directed search. Restricting portfolios can improve bond prices and bond-market activity, but the net effect depends on relative frictions in bond and CDS markets, the exposure of investors, and how the sovereign responds to the policy. Our novel identification strategy exploits confidential microdata to quantify trading frictions and the exposure distribution. The calibrated model generates realistic CDS-bond basis deviations, bid–ask spreads, and CDS volumes and positions. Our baseline specification predicts trading frictions and an inability to short sell bonds significantly improves sovereign debt prices, but policies that restrict CDS trading have small effects.

The politics of redistribution and sovereign default

This paper studies how distributional and electoral concerns shape sovereign default incentives within a quantitative model of sovereign debt with heterogeneous agents and non-linear income taxation. The small open economy is characterized by a two-party system in which the left-wing party has a larger preference for redistribution than the right-wing party. Political turnover is the endogenous outcome of the electoral process. Fiscal policy faces a tradeoff: On the one hand, the government has incentives to finance its spending via external debt to avoid distortionary income taxation. On the other hand, the accumulation of external debt raises the cost of borrowing. Quantitative findings suggest that the left-wing party implements a more progressive income tax, is more prone to default, and has a lower electoral support than the right-wing party due to worse borrowing conditions and the distortionary effects of income taxation. In equilibrium, electoral uncertainty raises sovereign default risk.

Sovereign Debt Puzzles

We review the state of the sovereign debt literature and point out that the canonical model of sovereign debt cannot be easily reconciled with several facts about sovereign debt pricing and servicing. We identify and classify more than 20 puzzles. Some are well-known and documented, others are less so and are sometimes based on anecdotal evidence. We classify these puzzles into three categories: puzzles about how sovereigns issue debt; puzzles about the pricing of sovereign debt; and puzzles about sovereign default and the working out of defaults. We conclude by suggesting possible avenues for new research aimed at reconciling theory with what we observe in the real world.

Reputation and Partial Default

This paper presents a continuous-time reputation model of sovereign debt allowing for both varying levels of partial default and full default. In it, a government can be a nonstrategic commitment type or a strategic opportunistic type, and a government’s reputation is its equilibrium Bayesian posterior of being the commitment type. Our equilibrium has that for bond levels reachable by both types without defaulting, bigger partial defaults (or bigger haircuts for bond holders) imply higher interest rates for subsequent bond issuances, as in the data. (JEL D83, E32, E43, G12, H63)

Effects of information quality on signaling through sovereign debt issuance

This paper develops a sovereign debt model proposing that a debt issuance can be a credible signaling channel between a sovereign government and foreign creditors. The government has private information regarding the future economy. The one with a good economic outlook would like to find a credible way to disclose it to obtain a high bond price. Foreign creditors are interested in inferring the government’s private information to assess sovereign default risk precisely. The government’s private information is imperfect, so the precision of information matters. We study how the interaction of the prior, the signal, and its precision affects the equilibrium and the resulting welfare. We propose a unique separating signaling equilibrium demonstrating the feature that a more precise signal of good economic outlook leads to a greater extent of fiscal austerity. As the information becomes more precise, the signaling cost for a government with a good economic outlook increases. Interestingly, unless the prior is very pessimistic, a highly precise signal harms the sovereign because a resulting strong signaling motive drives it to reduce bond issuance excessively (paradox of highly precise information).

Rare Disasters, Financial Development, and Sovereign Debt

ABSTRACTWe propose a model of sovereign debt in which countries vary in their level of financial development, defined as the extent to which they can issue debt denominated in domestic currency in international capital markets. We show that low levels of financial development generate the “debt intolerance” phenomenon that plagues emerging markets: it reduces overall debt capacity, increases credit spreads, and limits the country's ability to smooth consumption.

Sudden Stops, Productivity and the Optimal Level of International Reserves for Small Open Economies

This paper contributes to the theory of optimal international reserves by extending the Jeanne-Rancière (Econ J 121:905-930, 2011) endowment small open economy (SOE) model to a SOE with production that accounts for the main sources of economic growth. We, first, derive a richer analytical version of the optimal reserves formula in our set-up, essentially driven by labour-augmenting productivity and the saving rate. Then, under a plausible calibration based on 1975-2020 data averages for typical emerging market countries facing the risk of sudden stops in capital inflows, we find that the optimal reserves-to-output ratio is 7.5%, i.e., the mid-point in the range between that in Jeanne and Rancière (Econ J 121:905-930, 2011), of 9.1%, calibrated to the same sample of 34 middle-income countries, and that in Bianchi et al. (Am Econ Rev 108(9):2629-2670, 2018), of 6.0%, obtained in a different, sovereign debt model without capital and production. We explain the lower optimal reserves-to-output ratio relative to the endowment SOE by the role of capital accumulation as precautionary saving: the accumulated capital stock can potentially be used as a pledge to external creditors in obtaining borrowing, thereby insuring better a SOE against sudden stops. As the countries in our sample appear quite heterogeneous, we also compute the optimal reserves-to-output ratio by region. It turns out that our extended to production insurance SOE model matches well the average reserves-to-output ratio in the data for Latin America, represented by nearly half of our sample, 16 countries, at just above 10%. Yet, for Asia, Africa and Europe our regional model-based ratios understate considerably the respective data averages, suggesting the need to explore alternative modelling approaches.

Issues in the theory of sovereign debt and post-covid workouts

With a number of emerging markets and particularly low-income countries experiencing debt distress after COVID, there is a lively policy debate. At the root of the debate is the fundamental question of what incentivizes a sovereign has to repay its debts; without answering this question, it is difficult to appraise policy options. The tension between developing a realistic model of sovereign debt and having an elegant self-contained general equilibrium macroeconomic model are familiar from corporate finance. The general equilibrium approach has important philosophical implications, but the more targeted corporate-finance-like approach is needed for most practical problems that policymakers face.

Long-term sovereign debt: A steady state analysis

A model of long-term sovereign debt with a fiscal rule and endogenous default is explored in which debt maturity governs the number of risky steady states. Generally, there is a good steady state with high investment and low indebtedness and default frequencies, and a bad steady state with the reverse. The multiplicity arises when maturity tames an aggressive feedback loop that emerges in the sovereign budget set between debt service and required issuance as expected default frequencies rise. This feedback loop delivers a unique risky steady state at shorter maturities. Local dynamics and policy consequences are explored quantitatively.

Signalling creditworthiness with fiscal austerity

Sovereign borrowers may tighten their fiscal stance in order to signal their creditworthiness to lenders. In a model of sovereign debt with incomplete information, I show that a trustworthy country may reduce its debt beyond the optimal level in order to separate itself from less reliable countries. Since austerity is costly, the gains in the price of debt from separating need to be high enough, as is the case when credit ratings provide very noisy signals. I proxy for the informativeness of the ratings with two model-implied variables and find empirical support for the existence of a signalling channel.

Sovereign Risk, Currency Risk, and Corporate Balance Sheets

AbstractWe provide a comprehensive account of the evolution of the currency composition of sovereign and corporate external borrowing by emerging markets from 2003 to 2017. We show that a higher reliance on foreign currency debt by the corporate sector is associated with higher sovereign default risk. We introduce local currency sovereign debt and private sector currency mismatch into a standard sovereign debt model to examine how the currency composition of corporate borrowing affects the sovereign’s incentive to inflate or default. A calibration of the model generates the empirical patterns of sovereign credit risk.

Reconstruction Rating Model of Sovereign Debt by Logical Analysis of Data

Sovereign debt ratings provided by rating agencies measure the solvency of a country, as gauged by a lender or an investor. It is an indication of the risk involved in investment and should be determined correctly and in a well-timed manner. The current system is lacking transparency of rating criteria and mechanism. The present study reconstructs sovereign debt ratings through logical analysis of data (LAD), which is based on the theory of Boolean functions. It organizes groups of countries according to 20 World Bank-defined variables for the period 2012–2015. The Fitch Rating Agency, one of the three big global rating agencies, is used as a case study. An approximate algorithm was crucial in exploring the rating method, in correcting the agency’s errors, and in determining the estimated rating of otherwise unrated countries. The outcome was a decision tree for each year. Each country was assigned a rating. On average, the algorithm reached almost 98% matched ratings in the training set and was verified by 84% in the test set.

Path Dependence in Sovereign Debt Modelling: System Dynamics Approach

The article offers a system dynamic modelling of sovereign debt using the path dependence concept. Using simulation modelling we are trying to find a fixed point in a motion of national sovereign debt towards its equilibrium and to change the existing mental model perception towards sovereign debt by changing the structure of the system.The research reveals the idea of the “debt snowball concept” using recursive dynamic approach. The dynamic linear and nonlinear recursive models of Ukrainian sovereign debt with the appropriate multi – order recursive equations are constructed.The fixed point as an equilibrium value for a country’s sovereign debt stock to GDP ratio with a linear dependence has been built. Finding the initial point for resolving sovereign debt issue is especially actual for national economy under strong fiscal pressure caused by COVID-19 and wartime on the East of the country. For this purpose, the sovereign debt cyclical behaviour was also reproduced using phase plot graphic.The fixed point as an equilibrium value for a country’s sovereign debt stock to GDP ratio with a nonlinear dependence was determined. The main purpose of this part of the analysis was to show the more complicated oscillated behaviour of the system and the multiplicity of possible equilibrium points.The stock and flows SD modelling and simulation analysis of sovereign debt in Ukrainian economy allows to make the conclusion of the inevitability of the sovereign debt existence even on the stable level and with the balanced national budget. JEL classіfіcatіon: E60, H63, H68

On sovereign default with time-varying interest rates

We extend and refine Aguiar and Amador (2019)'s contraction approach to Eaton and Gersovitz (1981)'s sovereign debt model. In particular, we encompass time-varying interest rates and growth. We show that, when long-term interest rates exceed growth, equilibrium is unique and can be computed via contraction mapping. The method unifies separate branches of literature, showing that the contraction property is the reflection of previous arbitrage arguments based on replication, inspired by Bulow and Rogoff (1989).

Defaultable sovereign debts with macroeconomic conditions and periodic news

This paper presents a default structural model of sovereign debt under macroeconomic conditions and periodic news. I model the macroeconomic conditions to be a finite state of Markov chain, and the periodic news to be a predictable factor in the drifting and the diffusion parts in the underlying value of the representative firm. The innovation of our model is to characterize the price of sovereign debt and the sovereign credit spread associated with macroeconomic conditions, and to model periodic news with both continuous factors and periodic factors. Both the defaultable yield-to-maturity, the sovereign credit spread and the duration are related to the finite state of Markov chain and periodic news. Furthermore, we obtain a closed-form solution for the two-state Markov chain associated to macroeconomic conditions and periodical information update.

Sovereign Default and Imperfect Tax Enforcement

We show that, in many countries, tax compliance is volatile and markedly responds to fiscal policy. To explore the consequence of this novel stylized fact, we build a model of sovereign debt with limited commitment and imperfect tax enforcement. Fiscal policy persistently affects the size of the informal economy, which impact future fiscal revenues and thus default risk. This mechanism captures one key empirical regularity of economies with imperfect tax enforcement: the low sensitivity of debt price to fiscal consolidations. The interaction of imperfect tax enforcement and limited commitment strongly constrains the dynamics of optimal fiscal policy. During default crises, high tax distortions force the government towards extreme fiscal policies, notably including costly austerity spells.

Reputation and Sovereign Default

This paper presents a continuous‐time model of sovereign debt. In it, a relatively impatient sovereign government's hidden type switches back and forth between a commitment type, which cannot default, and an opportunistic type, which can, and where we assume outside lenders have particular beliefs regarding how a commitment type should borrow for any given level of debt and bond price. In any Markov equilibrium, the opportunistic type mimics the commitment type when borrowing, revealing its type only by defaulting on its debt at random times. The equilibrium features a “graduation date”: a finite amount of time since the last default, after which time reputation reaches its highest level and is unaffected by not defaulting. Before such date, not defaulting always increases the country's reputation. For countries that have recently defaulted, bond prices and the total amount of debt are increasing functions of the amount of time since the country's last default. For countries that have not recently defaulted (i.e., those that have graduated), bond prices are constant.

Sovereign Risk and Financial Risk

This paper examines the relationship between sovereign bond spreads, local economic activity, and global financial risk. We use secondary-market prices of dollar-denominated sovereign securities to construct yield spreads between sovereign bond yields and yields on the appropriately defined default risk-free securities, constructed using zero-coupon U.S. Treasury yields. We use these spreads to construct country-specific sovereign bond spreads for a sample of almost 50 countries over the 1980-2012 period. We then examine the extent to which movements in sovereign spreads are determined by local risk factors, such as fluctuations in exchange rates and local stock market returns, versus global risk factors that arguably proxy for risk-attitudes that prevail in U.S. financial markets. To measure global risk factors we rely on the excess bond premium constructed by Gilchrist and Zakrajsek (2012). The excess bond premium is a measure of distress in U.S. corporate bond markets and comoves closely with conditions in financial markets. According to GZ, the excess bond premium provides a quantitative measure of the risk-attitudes of financial intermediaries. Our results indicate that a substantial portion of the comovement among sovereign spreads can be accounted for by changes in such global risk factors. We also examine the extent to which, during the 2007-09 financial crisis, such global risk factors were related to perceived default risk in the U.S. financial sector. Next, we extend our methodology to construct credit spreads for euro-denominated sovereign bonds for about 40 countries over the 2000-2012 period, and we examine the implications of our empirical pricing framework for comovement among sovereign spreads during the ongoing turmoil in European sovereign debt markets. Lastly, we study the e§ect of various stabilization policy announcements during the recent financial crisis on sovereign bond spreads through the global risk factors. We also compare the impacts of stabilization policy measures during financial crises in the past. Lastly, we construct a general equilibrium model of sovereign debt and default to rationalize the empirical findings. The model features include a risk-averse global investor, optimal default, and endogenous debt dynamics for multiple countries. The sovereign default and bond prices depend on the borrower's economic conditions as well as the lender's risk aversion and riskiness. We quantitatively examine the link between the financial risk that the lender faces and the distribution of sovereign risk.

A Theory of Debt Accumulation and Deficit Cycles

This paper introduces a tractable model of sovereign debt where governments cannot default strategically, but face intertemporal tradeoffs between (i) preferring more primary deficits to less and (ii) avoiding costly defaults. Governments run deficits when debt and, then, the marginal costs of increasing debt are low. However, after an extended period of debt accumulation, default probabilities begin to rise quickly, and so do the marginal costs of running debt. Eventually, debt reaches a critical level relative to the size of the economy, a fiscal tipping point, after which debt accumulation stops, with governments cycling between deficits and surpluses, until perhaps a time of default. The main conclusions are that (i) fiscal tipping points typically occur when distanceto- default is between 10% and 20%; (ii) tipping points are pushed back in a stable macroeconomic environment, such that default premiums are higher in countries that implement austerity earlier and remain positive even when exogenous risk is very small (two “volatility paradoxes”); (iii) liquidity conditions and fiscal reforms may affect default probabilities in an ambiguous way; (iv) fiscal austerity may arrive too late: “debt intolerance” arises around the fiscal tipping point.

Sovereign Risk, Currency Risk, and Corporate Balance Sheets

We examine the question of why a government would default on debt denominated in its own currency. Using a newly constructed dataset of 14 emerging markets, we document that the private sector continues to borrow from abroad in foreign currency while sovereigns increasingly borrow from foreigners in local currency. Because depreciation can be very costly for a corporate sector with a currency mismatch due to foreign currency liabilities, emerging market sovereigns may still prefer to default on local currency sovereign debt rather than inflate the debt away. Using our cross-country dataset, we show that a higher reliance on external foreign currency corporate financing is associated with a higher default risk on sovereign debt. We quantify the effects of corporate balance sheet mismatch on sovereign credit risk by introducing local currency sovereign debt and private currency mismatch into a standard sovereign debt model. The model demonstrates how the currency composition of corporate borrowing affects the sovereign's incentive to inflate or default in times of fiscal stress. Reductions in the share of private external debt in foreign currency can lead to significant reductions in sovereign default risk. A calibration of the model generates the empirical patterns of currency and credit risk in local currency sovereign debt documented in Du and Schreger (2014).