What sustained borrowing without third-party enforcement, in the early days of sovereign lending? Philip II of Spain accumulated towering debts while stopping all payments to his lenders four times. How could the sovereign borrow much and default often? We argue that bankers’ ability to cut...

Philip II of Spain accumulated debts equivalent to 60% of GDP. He also failed to honor them four times. We ask what allowed the sovereign to borrow much while defaulting often. Earlier work emphasized either banker irrationality or the importance of sanctions. Using new archival data, we show...

This paper examines the ex ante core of a pure exchange economy with asymmetric information in which state-dependent allocations are required to satisfy incentive compatibility. This restriction on players' strategies in the cooperative game can be interpreted as incomplete contracts or partial...

This paper considers a new approach to the optimal management and analysis of exchange rate target zones by regarding the operation of a target zone as a dynamic signalling game between the monetary authorities and the financial markets. A Sequential Open Loop (Feedback) policy of sterilized...