Probability Of Sovereign Default Research Articles

Liquidity pressure and the sovereign-bank diabolic loop

We study the sovereign-bank nexus through the liquidity channel. Using a sample of 22 European economies during 2012–2021, we find that an increase in banking liquidity pressures leads to a significant widening of SCDS spreads as banks are encouraged to purchase sovereign bonds for liquidity management purposes, consistent with the "flight to liquidity" phenomenon. This excessive exposure increases the probability of sovereign default in the long run by reducing the sustainability of sovereign debt and evoking a diabolic loop scenario. The results also suggest that ECB intervention can reinforce the feedback loop by lowering funding costs and triggering collateral trading.

Political constraints and sovereign default

We study how political constraints, characterized by the degree of flexibility to choose fiscal policies, affect the probability of sovereign default. To that end, we relax the assumption that policymakers always repay their debt in the dynamic model of fiscal policy developed by Battaglini and Coate (2008). In our setup, legislators bargain over taxes, general spending, debt repayment, and a local public good that can be targeted to the region they represent. Under tighter political constraints, more legislators have veto power, implying that local public goods need to be provided to a larger number of regions. The resources that are freed after a default have to be shared with a higher number of individuals, which reduces the benefits from defaulting in per-capita terms. This lowers the incentive to default compared to the case with lax political constraints. The model is calibrated to Argentina and the results conform to robust empirical evidence. An event study for the 2001/2002 sovereign debt crisis shows that political constraints had an important role in the buildup that led to the crisis.

The past, present and future of euro area monetary-fiscal interactions

The EU’s Treaties were designed to limit the interaction between fiscal and monetary policies. However, over the last decade, the introduction of the ECB’s Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme and its sovereign bond purchase programmes has created some strong linkages between monetary and fiscal policies in the Eurosystem. The ECB’s monetary policies have improved fiscal debt sustainability and reduced the probability of sovereign default. However, there may need to be limits to the ECB’s purchases of sovereign bonds. This paper discusses the interactions between fiscal and monetary policies in the euro area and describes how the arguments raised by the European Court of Justice in the Weiss and Gauweiler cases suggest there may be hard limits on the size of the Eurosystem’s sovereign bond holdings. These limits may undermine the positive impact of the OMT announcement and force the ECB into some difficult choices in the coming years.

Financial stress and the probability of sovereign default

Economic vulnerabilities may remain latent for long periods and may only reveal their full impact on a country’s fiscal sustainability when the economy undergoes a significant shock. This could lead researchers to understate the impact of such vulnerabilities on a country’s probability of sovereign default, particularly at times of global or local financial stress. We analyze data from a panel of 113 countries over the period 1990–2014 to examine the impact of debt burden indicators and macro fundamentals on risk of sovereign default in emerging markets and advanced economies. We test whether economic fundamentals and fiscal vulnerabilities have a stronger impact on the risk of sovereign default during periods of financial distress than during tranquil times. We find that financial stress significantly amplifies the impact of the debt-to-GDP ratio, the stock of international reserves, and GDP per capita on the probability of sovereign default.

The Informal Labor Market and The Costs of Sovereign Borrowing

The informal labor market or informal sector is responsible for an economically significant fraction of GDP production in emerging economies. Taking the informal sector to be all economic activity intentionally concealed from tax authorities to avoid tax payments, an increase in the sector adversely impacts the government ability to collect tax revenues and may increase the probability of sovereign default. In turn, higher probability of sovereign default makes borrowing in international financial markets more costly. However, the current macro-finance models do not properly account for the role of the informal sector in explaining sovereign default risk. In this paper, I estimate a vector autoregressive model measuring the causal relationships between sovereign spreads, a measure of default risk, and the size of the informal sector. The results indicate that the size of the informal sector is as important as formal output variations in explaining sovereign spreads. Therefore, policies designed by emerging economies to reduce the size of the informal labor market are important to decrease the costs of borrowing in international financial markets and increase the financing options for productive investment.

Differential Treatment in the Bond Market: Sovereign Risk and Mutual Fund Portfolios

How does sovereign risk affect investors' behavior? We answer this question using a novel database that combines sovereign default probabilities for 27 developed and emerging markets with monthly data on the portfolios of individual bond mutual funds. We first show that changes in yields do not fully compensate investors for additional sovereign risk, so that bond funds reduce their exposure to a country's assets when its sovereign default risk increases. However, the magnitude of the response varies widely across countries. Fund managers aggressively reduce their exposure to high-debt countries and high-risk countries. By contrast, they are more lenient toward core developed markets. In this sense, these economies appear to receive preferential treatment. Second, we document what determines the destination of reallocation ows. When fund managers reduce their exposure to a country in response to its sovereign risk, they shift their assets to countries outside the immediate geographic region while at the same time avoiding countries with high debt-to-GDP ratios and markets to which they are already heavily exposed. These results are supportive of models of sovereign default that assign a nontrivial role to the preferences of international creditors.

Quality of government institutions and spreads on sovereign credit default swaps

We examine how the quality of government institutions affects the likelihood of sovereign default. We find both economically and statistically significant adverse effects of country governance indicators on sovereign credit default swap spreads. The evidence suggests that better-quality governance enhances a country’s willingness to repay debt, and hence reduces the probability of sovereign default. The results still hold after we account for potential endogeneity and conduct a number of robustness tests.

Score-Driven Systemic Risk Signaling for European Sovereign Bond Yields and CDS Spreads

We compute joint sovereign default probabilities as coincident systemic risk indicators. Instead of commonly used CDS spreads, we use government bond yield data which provide a longer data history. We show that for the more recent sample period 2008--2015, joint default probabilities based on CDS and bond yield data yield similar results. For the period 1987-2008, only the bond yield data can be used to shed light on European sovereign systemic stress. We also show that simple averages of rolling pairwise correlations do not always yield intuitive systemic risk indicators.

The Liquidity Effects of Official Bond Market Intervention

To “ensure depth and liquidity,” the European Central Bank intervened in sovereign debt markets through its Securities Markets Programme (SMP), providing a unique opportunity to estimate the effects of large-scale asset purchases on sovereign bond liquidity premia. From reduced-form estimates, we find robust, economically significant impact and lasting reductions in sovereign bonds’ liquidity premia in response to official purchases. We develop a search-based asset-pricing model to understand our empirical results. The theory implies that bond liquidity premia fall in response to both official purchases and rising sovereign default probabilities, as seen in the data.

Sovereign defaults by currency denomination

This paper explores the drivers of sovereign default in 100 countries over the period 1996–2012. We build a new data set of sovereign defaults and find that default events for local and foreign currency bonds are equally likely. However, governments default under different economic and financial conditions depending on the currency in which bonds are issued. The explained variation in default probability rises from 43% to 62% when we account for differences in currency denomination. We also provide evidence that global factors and market sentiment, which are known to drive sovereign spreads, do not help explain the probability of sovereign default. Hence, these factors appear to affect the price of sovereign credit risk, although not the risk itself.

Fiscal Adjustments and the Probability of Sovereign Default

SummaryBased on probit estimates, this paper analyzes the effects of fiscal consolidation on the probability of sovereign default in the short run. Using a panel of 104 developing countries from 1980 to 2009 and controlling for various economic, fiscal and political factors, we find that fiscal adjustments in general do not significantly reduce the probability of default even if they are large. Instead, the composition of budget consolidation is decisive in reducing default risk. Expenditure based adjustments are not successful while revenue based adjustments lower the probability of default in the following year by 36 to 55 percent. This finding also holds when economic growth is low or government debt is high as well as when IMF lending is taken into account.

Sovereign Defaults by Currency Denomination

This paper explores the drivers of sovereign defaults in 100 countries over the period 1996-2012. We build a new data set of sovereign defaults and find that default events on local and foreign currency bonds are equally likely. However, governments default under different economic and financial conditions depending on the currency in which bonds are issued. The explained variation in default probability rises from 43% to 62% when we account for differences in currency denomination. We also provide evidence that global factors and market sentiment, which are known to drive sovereign spreads, do not help explain the probability of sovereign default. Hence, these factors appear to affect the price of sovereign credit risk, but not the risk itself.

Fiscal Limits and Monetary Policy: Default vs. Inflation

In times of fiscal stress, governments fail to adjust fiscal policy in line with the requirements for debt sustainability. Under these circumstances, monetary policy impacts the probability of sovereign default alongside inflation dynamics. Uribe (2006) studies the relationship between inflation and sovereign defaults with a model in which the central bank controls a risky interest rate. He concludes that low inflation can only be maintained if the government sometimes defaults. This paper follows Uribe (2006) by examining monetary policy that controls a risky interest rate. However, it differs by the baseline assumption about the objectives of the central bank. In this paper, monetary policy is not pure inflation targeting: it is assumed that the central bank minimizes the probability of default under the upper restriction on inflation. An advantage of this framework is that it avoids the issue of zero risk premium, which exists in Uribe (2006), while at the same time allowing a study of the relationship between the constraints on monetary policy, the equilibrium default rate, and the risk premium. We show that monetary policy that controls the risky interest rate can mitigate default risks only when the upper limit on inflation is sufficiently high. The higher the agents believe the upper limit on inflation to be, the lower the equilibrium risk premium and probability of default are. Under a low default rate, constraints on inflation can only be fulfilled when fiscal shocks are either positive or small.

Public debt, sovereign default risk and shadow economy

This paper analyzes the interactions between government's indebtedness, sovereign default risk and the size of the informal sector. We test an underlying theory that suggests that in societies with limited tax enforcement, the presence of informality constrains the set of pledgeable fiscal policy alternatives, increases public debt and the implied probability of sovereign debt restructuring. The hypotheses that we test in our empirical analysis are: a larger size of the informal sector is associated with (1) higher public indebtedness, (2) higher interest rates paid on sovereign debt, (3) a higher level of financial instability and (4) a higher probability of sovereign default. The empirical results from cross-country panel regressions show that after controlling for previously highlighted variables in the literature that could explain the variation in financial instability, sovereign default risk and public indebtedness, the size of informality remains as a significant determinant of these variables.

A Market Perspective on the European Sovereign Debt and Banking Crisis

Europe has been beset by an interrelated banking crisis and sovereign debt crisis. Bond spreads faced by Greece and Ireland, and to a lesser extent Portugal followed by Spain, have increased. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of financial markets, focusing mainly on the four countries in the frontline of these pressures: Greece and Portugal, on the one hand, where the problems are primarily fiscal in nature; and Ireland and Spain, on the other, where banking problems related to the property boom and bust have been the key moving part. The paper first examines the probabilities of default implicit in observable market spreads and considers these calculations against sovereign debt dynamics. It then explores the implications of the interaction between bank losses and fiscal deficits on the one hand, and the feedback that any debt haircuts anticipated by markets could have on bank solvency. The study finds that market-implied sovereign default probabilities do in fact discriminate quite clearly between countries based on five criteria that affect the probability of debt restructuring. The discussion highlights some implications for banking system balance sheets of expected losses and shows the potential impact on them of sovereign restructuring implicit in market analysis. While the paper does not make any recommendations for policy action, it does explore a range of policy options and the implications each might have for the financial markets. JEL Classification: G01, G12, G15, G18, G21, H06, H60, H62, H63, H68 Keywords: financial crisis, sovereign risks, public deficits and debt, bond markets, banks.

Estimating Default Probabilities of Emerging Market Sovereigns: A New Look at a Not-so-New Literature

The January 2001 proposal for a New Basel Capital Accord has renewed the interest in obtaining default probabilities for various types of borrowers. This paper uses a panel logit model to estimate default probabilities of 78 emerging market countries (1984-97) as a function of a set of economic and political variables. These sovereign default probabilities are then compared with the default rates associated with the sovereign credit ratings of the two major rating agencies, Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's. Unlike the existing literature, we define the dependent variable (sovereign default) differently, using the changes in the levels of debt arrears and amounts rescheduled as criteria instead of the levels themselves. The paper finds, first, that the most important determinants of sovereign default appear to be the past repayment performance of a country, the cost of international credit, the volatility of per capita income, and political risks. Second, the comparison of estimated default probabilities with rating agencies' default rates gives some preliminary evidence that the latter seem to considerably underestimate sovereign default risk. In other words, sovereign credit ratings appear to be to high on average.

Sovereign default and the sustainability risk premium effect

We analyze the joint determination of interest rate risk and debt sustainability for governments with fiscal imbalances. Because higher interest rates imply increased debt services, they worsen the government's financial situation and increase the probability of sovereign default. Thus, higher interest rates eventually lead to a decrease in the real demand for government bonds, which imposes an additional constraint on government debt sustainability.

Rating the rating agencies: Anticipating currency crises or debt crises?

We revisit the question whether sovereign ratings predict financial crises. In line with previous studies, we find that ratings do not predict currency crises and are instead downgraded ex-post. However, the likelihood of currency crisis and the implied probability of sovereign default are not closely linked in emerging markets post-1994. When debt crises are defined as sovereign distress – when spreads are higher than 1000 basis points or 10 percentage points – we find that access to international capital markets is reduced by half. In addition, although sovereign distress events last for typically 5.2 consecutive months, they can persist for longer periods up to nine quarters. Finally, lagged ratings and ratings changes, including negative outlooks and credit watches, are useful in anticipating sovereign distress.

The Kiss of Death: IMF Subsidies in Sovereign Debt Markets

This paper explores the effects of official creditor subsidies to private lenders on loan pricing and credit availability. A two-period model is developed which includes a private lender, a sovereign borrower and an official creditor. The presence of credible sovereign collateral is shown to be critical to the behavior of the official creditor, even though the collateral need never be seized. The probability of sovereign default is derived in a formal way. The kiss of death occurs when official creditor participation does not reduce the probability of default by enough to outweigh the increase in the expected loss to the private lender if default occurs. The result becomes stronger the riskier the sovereign borrower. The model suggests a different, more supervisory role for official creditors, particularly the IMF.