In January 1998, the British weekly The Economist called the British bank Lloyds a "money machine". Such an outcome was far from inevitable for a bank that had been one of the hardest hit victims of the 1982 sovereign debt crisis, when most developing countries found themselves unable to repay...

Using novel methods, we comprehensively analyze volatility connectedness among most traded currencies using high-frequency data from 2009 to 2023. Our study presents the first empirical evidence of a statistically significant association between increases in connectedness and endogenously...

We document that compared to all other investor groups investment funds exhibit a distinctly procyclical behavior when financial-market beliefs about the probability of a euro-related, institutional rare disaster spike. In response to such euro disaster risk shocks, investment funds shed...

Political risk is a significant determinant of bond yields and economic growth in both developed and emerging markets and we develop a debt sustainability analysis model with both channels using a country ratings proxy of political risk. Political risk also affects a sovereign's willingness to...

Starting from the Tinbergen principle and four areas of economic policy, we argue that in practice economic policies each have multiple effects, rendering a clear and simple allocation of objectives and instruments to different policies and their responsible institutions complex. First, the case...

Political crises often coincide with fiscal crises, with complex causal dynamics at play. We examine the interaction between tax revolts and sovereign risk using a quantitative structural model calibrated to Argentina. In the model, the government can be controlled by political parties with...

This study examines the mean difference and the indirect relationship between earnings management (measured by discretionary accruals) and audit fees. It spans the period from 2005 to 2020 for four countries in two pairs, namely Italy and Spain, and Germany and France. The investigation...

We study the social and distributional implications of the euro area (EA) sovereign debt crisis in countries that received external financial assistance for macroeconomic adjustments. Combining granular data from about one million survey interviews with households across euro area states carried...

Using novel methods, we comprehensively analyze volatility connectedness among most traded currencies using high-frequency data from 2009 to 2023. Our study presents the first empirical evidence of a statistically significant association between increases in connectedness and endogenously...

This paper documents changes in investors' demand for sovereign debt during a debt crisis. Using a dataset containing individual bids on Portuguese debt auctions, I document that bid functions become more inelastic during the crisis. That is, investors require bigger drops in price to buy...

This study investigates the effect of the recent Ghanaian banking crisis on the country's ongoing sovereign debt crisis. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) is adopted to estimate the immediate effects of Ghana's banking crisis on public debt levels using secondary data spanning the...

In response to the scarce evidence regarding herd behaviour in emerging and frontier debt markets, this paper investigates the potential mispricing of MENA sovereign risk. We explore whether this mispricing results from international investor herding, where MENA debt assets are collectively...

This study applied supervised machine learning algorithms to macro-fiscal panel data from 20 EU member states (2000-2024) to model and predict fiscal stress episodes in the Eurozone. Conventional frameworks for assessing public debt sustainability often rely on static thresholds and linear...

Egypt has experienced a sharp rise in external debt over the past decade, increasing from USD 55.8 billion in 2015 to over USD 165.3 billion by 2023. Despite maintaining a debt-to-GDP ratio within internationally accepted thresholds (approximately 45% in 2023), the country faces mounting...

We study the resilience of banks to macroeconomic slowdowns in a context of lax microprudential regulations: Colombia during the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. We find that numerous banks underperformed during the crisis, as their shareholders and board members tunnelled resources...

This paper analyses the risks facing resource-dependent countries. These include: (i) economic mismanagement (the 'resource curse'); (ii) political mismanagement; (iii) environmental damage (climate change and the destruction of natural capital). It distinguishes 'risk' (which can be addressed...

The paper quantifies the impact of the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war on sovereign bond yields for 58 countries. Our findings based on event study methodology and multivariate cross-sectional regression analysis highlight the salient role of trade channel in shaping the markets' reaction to...

This paper challenges the prevailing view in the sovereign debt literature by arguing that sovereign debt markets, in many respects, behave similarly to other credit markets. These markets are hierarchical rather than flat, inherently hybrid in nature, blending elements of public order and...

Many sovereign defaults have occurred worldwide over the past 200 years. An analysis of 321 sovereign debt restructurings since 1815 shows that foreign private and institutional investor losses were 43 percent on average. Notably, beginning in the 1970s, several debt exchanges have increasingly...

Protests and fiscal crises often coincide, with complex causal dynamics at play. We examine the interaction between tax revolts and sovereign risk using a quantitative structural model calibrated to Argentina during the Macri administration (2015-2019). In the model, the government can be...

This book explores the IMF's engagement in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. It explains the nature and consequences of the assistance provided to Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus by the "troika" – the IMF, European Central Bank, and European Commission. It also...