We introduce a novel database on sovereign defaults that involve public debt instruments governed by domestic law. By systematically reviewing a large number of sources, we identify 134 default and restructuring events of domestic debt instruments, in 52 countries from 1980 to 2018. Domestic-law...

In the first thirty years of its operations, key functions of the privileged National Bank of the Kingdom of Serbia (1884-1914) were those of a creditor of the economy, issuer of currency and banker to the government. The National Bank’s success in the performance of its functions was mainly...

A difference is made between open and hidden or veiled government bankruptcies. The latter are happening if budget deficits are covered by substantial money creation leading to inflation. In this case non-indexed government debt loses its value and is inflated away. This path is not open, if the...

We explore the long run impact of the Spanish missions on Native American outcomes in the early 20th century. Native communities who interacted with Spanish missionaries developed into enclaves which blended Catholicism with native culture, and some survived assaults on their property rights by...

Most textbooks introducing German law devote special attention to the corruption of law and legal institutions that took place during the Nazi dictatorship. And then they describe the period in German legal history after the Second World War. This era involved dramatic developments that...

Latin Americans have sought to contribute to the content of international economic law since at least the late nineteenth century, longing to be both the authors and addressees of international law. As a principal contribution to a new international economic order (NIEO), the 1974 Charter of...

What impact do mass civil society groups have on public policy? We study this issue by analyzing opposition to national prohibition by German-American groups and associations in the early twentieth century, before and after state-sponsored suppression of them that coincided with U.S. entry to...

This paper studies a new mechanism that allows political elites from a non-democratic regime to survive a democratic transition: connections. We document this mechanism in the transition from the Vichy regime to democracy in post-World War II France. The parliamentarians who had supported the...