Purpose - This study examines the effect of external debt and domestic capital formation on economic development in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies. Design/methodology/approach - Using the Dynamic Common Correlation Effects (DCCE) technique and the Driscoll and Kraay fixed-effect technique,...

Theory suggests that corporate and sovereign bonds are fundamentally different, also because sovereign debt has no bankruptcy mechanism and is hard to enforce. We show empirically that the two assets are more similar than you think, at least when it comes to high-yield bonds over the past 20...

Theory suggests that corporate and sovereign bonds are fundamentally different, also because sovereign debt has no bankruptcy mechanism and is hard to enforce. We show empirically that the two assets are more similar than you think, at least when it comes to high-yield bonds over the past 20...

Twenty years after the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief initiative, debt levels in low-income countries are rising again, renewing sustainability concerns. The prevailing view suggests that China and other emerging lenders exploited the HIPC initiative to expand lending. Using...

Many countries are still struggling with high and rising debt levels. The economic impact of the pandemic, as well as some longer-term structural factors, explain this situation. The key problem is the high level of debt service relative to government revenues, which makes it difficult to...

There is a growing consensus that sovereign debt challenges in Africa are no longer only an issue of poor debt contraction and management practices, but that the sovereign debt architecture itself needs reform. Drawing on existing data, the literature and interviews with experts this study...

The current research examines the impact of different macroeconomic indicators on Djibouti's external debt from 1990 to 2022 using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The empirical model provides evidence that economic growth, trade, and government expenditure have a positive and...

We examine the 2025 U.S. debt limit episode through the lens of financial markets. First, we document an increase in trading activity in the U.S. sovereign CDS market, and we infer a probability of default from CDS premiums. We find that default risk reached 1% by the November 6 Presidential...

Most of indexes regarding Credit Rating of the national debt bonds are associated to Gross National Product, which involves the well-known Keynesian Multiplicator of the IS-LM Equilibrium. Specifically, a common way of Sovereign Debt evaluation is its percentage of the Gross National Product in...

This paper is the first comprehensive analysis of the secured lending practices of Chinese creditors in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). We present a new dataset and detailed case studies of collateralized public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) loans from Chinese state-owned...

Being indebted represents significant risks associated with global financial instability in a world where financial stability hangs precariously between debt and economic growth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) casts a critical eye over countries navigating the perilous seas of fiscal...

A fundamental problem for sovereigns enacting climate policies is whether they can manage increasing debts as their economies suffer from adverse climate impacts. We develop stochastic debt sustainability analysis integrating a coupled climate-economy model with debt financing scenario...

We examine the effects of debt distribution characteristics, specifically skewness and maturity concentration, on sovereign yields across OECD countries over the period 1995Q1 to 2020Q4. After computing specific Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients, we find that positive skewness generally exerts...

I develop a dynamic macroeconomic model of a small open economy to identify two key vulnerabilities that prevent emerging markets from fully integrating into global markets: high financial integration costs and their low position in the international monetary hierarchy. These vulnerabilities...

South Africa has been struggling with high levels of gross debt. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened as the government has had to adjust its budget continuously, resulting in fiscal stance and debt sustainability becoming a matter of concern. This research aims to assess the possible asymmetric...

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...

The fall in the U.S. public debt/GDP ratio from 106% in 1946 to 23% in 1974 is often attributed to high rates of economic growth. This paper examines the roles of three other factors: primary budget surpluses, surprise inflation, and pegged interest rates before the Fed-Treasury Accord of 1951....

This paper proposes the establishment of a European Debt Agency (EDA) as a tool for the efficient management of Eurozone public debt, to address two primary risks: roll-over and sustainability risk. The proposed EDA would price its loans using a transparent formula that would anchor the price to...

This paper provides a systematic comparison of domestic and external sovereign defaults from 1980 to 2018, covering details of the default events, the different macro-financial, political and geo-economic environments in which they occur, and type of restructuring applied.

The share of U.S. dollar assets in the official foreign exchange reserve portfolios of central banks is sometimes taken as an indicator of dollar status. We show that the observed decline in the aggregate share of U.S. dollar assets does not stem from a systematic shift in currency preferences...

The book explores the Fund's engagement in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and especially after 2010. It explains how, why, and with what consequences the International Monetary Fund-along with the European Central Bank and the European Commission (together known as...

In this paper, we study the drivers of public debt surges across 172 countries from 1980-2021. We focus on the role of discrepancies between the annual change in public debt and the budget deficit, referred to as stock-flow adjustments (SFA). The analysis employs survival methods to model the...