Most economic activity occurs in cities. This creates a tension between local increasing returns, implied by the existence of cities, and aggregate constant returns, implied by balanced growth. To address this tension, we develop a general equilibrium theory of economic growth in an urban...

Intro -- Contents -- Foreword -- 1 Introduction -- 2 An Overview -- 3 Mathematical Preliminaries -- 4 Dynamic Programming under Certainty -- 5 Applications of Dynamic Programming under Certainty -- 6 Deterministic Dynamics -- 7 Measure Theory and Integration -- 8 Markov Processes -- 9 Stochastic...

This paper reviews the lessons learned from the application of the tools of game theory to the theoretical study of sovereign debt and default. We focus on two main questions. First, we review answers to the most fundamental question in the theory of sovereign debt: given that there is no...

Why is it difficult to restructure sovereign debt in a timely manner? In this paper, we present a theory of the sovereign debt-restructuring process in which delay arises as individual creditors hold up a settlement in order to extract greater payments from the sovereign. We then use the theory...

This paper uses a new dataset to study the relationship between economic output and sovereign default for the period 1820--2004. We find a negative but surprisingly weak relationship between economic output in the borrowing country and default on loans from private foreign creditors. Throughout...