We study the interactions between sovereign debt default and maturity choice in a setting with limited commitment for repayment as well as future debt issuances. Our main finding is that, under a wide range of conditions, the sovereign should, as long as default is not preferable, remain passive...

We study the optimal trade-off between commitment and flexibility in a consump- tion-savings model. Individuals expect to receive relevant information regarding tastes and thus they value the flexibility provided by larger choice sets. On the other hand, they also expect to suffer from...

Backus, Kehoe, and Kydland (1992), Baxter and Crucini (1995), and Stockman and Tesar (1995) find two major discrepancies between standard international business cycle models with complete markets and the data: In the models, cross-country correlations are much higher for consumption than for...