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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 study highlights the role of political leadership in external debt management by translating its effectiveness into economic growth. We use data from World Development Indicators (2018), Archigos (version 4.1) for Goemans et al. (2009) and Scartascini et al. (2021) from 1975 to 2019. The...

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between trade openness, external debt, and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on the period from 1990 to 2023. The research examines how trade openness and external debt impact regional economic performance by employing Panel...

The Global Emerging Markets Risk Database (GEMs) Consortium was established in 2009 as a joint initiative between the European Investment Bank and the International Finance Corporation to pool credit risk data. The GEMs database is designed to support technical cooperation between international...

This study examined the infuence of climate change vulnerability on the external debt vulnerability of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on the Vulnerable Twenties (V20s), utilizing panel data spanning from 2015 to 2020. The climate readiness, climate vulnerability, and external debt...

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...

Most debates and policy proposals about Global South countries' external debt problem take for granted the view that it is normal for their governments to issue debts denominated in foreign currencies. This paper tries to challenge this widely held and usually unquestioned assumption by relying...

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...